Sitaram Yechury calls for pan-India protest on June 16 against migrant workers' crisis

Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, on June 3, called for a nationwide protest on June 16 in view of the migrant workers crisis.

CPI(M), which held its first polit bureau meeting through video conferencing since the coronavirus-driven lockdown was enforced, decided to hold pan-India protests demanding cash transfer of Rs 7,500 per month to families outside the income tax paying bracket, minimum 200-days employment under MNREGA and a check on scrapping of labour laws.

He slammed the PM Modi-led central government for neither "augmenting the health facilities required to combat the pandemic nor in providing relief to the people who have been agonized cruelly", including migrant workers.

Yechury said by easing of restrictions in "an unplanned fashion", the Centre is abdicating its responsibilities and shifting the accountability to the state governments.

"All through the period of the national lockdown, instead of single-mindedly focusing on combating the pandemic and providing relief to the people, the central government went about systematically implementing its aggressive agenda of communal polarization and the pursuit of neo-liberal economic policies," the CPI(M) statement read.

The party condemned the targeting of the Muslims, "the arbitrary arrests and detention" of those who participated in protests against CAA, NRC, NPR under "draconian laws like the Sedition Act, UAPA and NSA".

Yechury said the various fiscal packages announced by the Centre were "simply unrealistic" as the revenue collections of the government have "fallen drastically".

He commended the efforts of the Left government in Kerala in controlling the number of coronavirus cases, adding that the Centre "refuses to learn" from the Kerala model.