"I will say 'Jai Hind', I will say 'Hindustan Zindabad' the CPI-M leader said.
The government had earlier this week briefed top BJP leadership on the same foreign policy issues.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist took 'extremely strong objection' to the remark of the Prime Minister's Office that parties should eschew temptation of politicising the misery of the people and said the statement on price rise was 'very insulting'. CPM said that as a political party, it is its responsibility to raise the issue of the plight of the people.
"The WPI is not a true reflection of the burden put on the people through the rise in prices of essential commodities. It is a misnomer to use it as an index for measuring inflation," party leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters. Quoting the oft-repeated phrase 'statistics, more statistics and damned lies', he said the weightage of the basket of food items to calculate the WPI was 22 per cent as against that of steel products which was 25 per cent.
Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accused the BJP of a "conspiracy to save Home Minister Amit Shah's skin" following a clash in Parliament over allegations of disrespect towards B.R. Ambedkar. She alleged that BJP MPs instigated the violence and pushed opposition members, including Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, to prevent them from entering Parliament. Gandhi also challenged BJP MPs to say "Jai Bhim" and accused them of having "violent intentions" and insulting the legacy of Ambedkar.
Asked whether Basu should be awarded the Bharat Ratna, CPI-M politburo member Biman Bose told reporters in Kolkata, "I don't know whether Basu fulfills the parameters. If he fulfills it, Basu can be given the highest civilian award.'' Bose flayed senior BJP leader L K Advani for writing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to propose the honour for Vajpayee, saying the saffron party was playing politics with the country's highest civilian award.
In a significant political development, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah announced on Thursday that an alliance with the Congress was finalised for all 90 assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir, which is going for its maiden assembly polls after being reorganised into a Union Territory.
Addressing a press conference after a two-day Politbureau meeting, party general secretary Prakash Karat said this was also the understanding of the other Left parties on Article 356, which provides for imposition of Central rule.
Banerjee accused the BJP of resorting to divisive tactics in the face of anticipated defeat in the initial phases of polling.
Tafajjal Hossain polled 33,849 votes in the by-election to the Boxanagar seat while CPI-M's Mizan Hussain got only 3,884 votes.
While the CPI-M in a statement after the secretariat on Friday maintained that Balakrishnan, who is also a Polit Bureau member, had sought leave for further treatment which had been accepted, the leader of opposition in the state assembly Ramesh Chennithala dubbed the move as a delayed dawning of wisdom.
The Congress is fighting the elections in a pre-poll alliance with National Conference and has fielded 32 candidates, mostly in Jammu region, compared to 51 by the regional party. Additionally, the CPI(M) and the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) have each been allocated one seat while both the Congress and NC had a 'friendly contest' on five seats.
However, the national party count has gone down to six from 14 in over seven decades.
BJP members, including the Leader of Opposition Sunil Sharma, opposed the resolution, saying it was not part of the listed business.
"We will complain. He can meditate, but televisions cannot show it," she said, alleging that this will amount to "violation of the MCC."
Yechury said the prime minister was making statements after statements outside Parliament when it was in session but not inside and this 'amounts to utter contempt of Parliament'.
After hectic parleys and much back and forth with the INDIA bloc allies, the Congress also ended up going into the polls with its original plan of largely going solo.
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The chief executive officer of a jute mill was beaten to death allegedly by workers on the factory premises after he refused to agree to their demand on wages at Bhadreswar in Hooghly district on Sunday.
Four Communist Party of India-Marxist supporters and a party worker were shot dead by Maoists on Friday after they suspected them to be police informers and their bodies dumped on the highway at West Midnapore and Purulia districts, the police said.
Villagers alleged that the minor, who was missing since Friday evening, was raped and murdered, and the police did not act on their complaint immediately.
The EC announced on Friday evening that out of eight parties only Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party and the CPI-M accepted the dare. Friday was the last date to enlist for the challenge.
Left parties were on Thursday divided on the Presidential election with the Communist Party of India-Marxist and Forward Bloc deciding to support United Progressive Alliance candidate Pranab Mukherjee while the Communist Party of India and Revolutionary Socialist Party opting to abstain from the voting.
On April 3, Gandhi's roadshow, on the way to filing his nomination in Wayanad was visibly different from that of 2019 in the hill constituency when the green flags of ally IUML outnumbered the Congress's in the crowd. There were no flags of any party or affiliated organisations.
The CPI(M), which has finalized 80 Lok Sabha seats, is in talks with other like-minded parties to forge electoral alliances on some more constituencies in its bid to forge an alternative against Congress and BJP.
The Congress in Kerala on Friday approached the Election Commission of India (ECI) against the decision of Doordarshan to telecast the controversial movie The Kerala Story, saying it was a 'tacit effort' to divide society on religious grounds to further the electoral prospects of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
A water theme and amusement park, the first such cooperative venture run by Kerala's ruling CPI(M), has been opened at the picturesque temple town of Parassinikadavu in Kannur district on Sunday.
Former West Bengal chief minister and a front-ranking Marxist leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will go down in the country's history as a pragmatic communist who kept aside his ideological convictions to woo capital for the industrialisation of his state.
The first Railway Budget of this Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government is a cosmetic exercise, high on rhetoric and low in substance, the CPI-M said.
The Kerala unit of the Congress instantly gets a headache when Shashi Tharoor lets loose one of his observations showering flowers on enemy territory. With every such action triggering controversy within a nervous Congress party, some feel it is high time Tharoor showed a degree of solidarity with the ideals of his party, notes Shyam G Menon.
None of its candidates won. Most of them lost badly.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has demanded an enquiry into what it alleges is a Rs 60,000 crore (Rs 600 billion) financial scam involving the manner in which 2G spectrum was allocated by the ministry of communications.
With the Communist Party of India-Marxist capturing some areas near Nandigram over the past few days, an eight-party anti-land acquisition organisation on Thursday said that the areas would be 'freed soon with people's help.' "Just wait. The areas captured by the CPI-M will be freed soon with help from the people," said Gana Unnayan O Jana Adhikar Sangram Samity president Maulana Siddiqulla Chowdhury.
Umanath, who mentioned people like Mukesh Ambani and Kalanidhi Maran too, got stuck when he came to Amitabh. "Amitabh Bachchan has amassed more than Rs 190 crore," he said, adding sarcastically, "Yes, the same Amitabh you see in that advertisement for chocolate."
Here are the number of seats won by parties in all states and Union Territories in the Lok Sabha elections.
The UPA-Left committee on the nuclear deal will meet on November 16.
"Day-to-day developments reconfirm our fears that the US wants to convert India into its subordinate ally in South Asia, even before the Indo-US nuclear deal has come into effect. This is a very ominous development," said Politburo member Sitaram Yechury. The CPI-M leader said that the 123 agreement, which was firmly anchored in the Hyde Act, has fallen short "not just of our objections but of the assurances of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself."
IPO bound HMIL, which is also from South Korea, had faced severe labour unrest for nearly a decade till the realisation -- a worker's union cannot be avoided -- dawned on it.
CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said India needs to follow an independent foreign policy.
