CPI(ML) Liberation asks CM to hear out sanitation workers
He added that the DMK government enjoyed considerable goodwill for its professed ideals of social justice and welfarism.
In a statement, Mr. Bhattacharya said that the AICCTU, one of the recognised Left Central Trade Unions associated with CPI(ML) Liberation, is firmly committed to the Save Constitution, Save Democracy campaign. 'The sanitation workers, organised by AICCTU, are committed to fight not just for their own rights but also for the cause of democracy.'
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The Hindu
14 hours ago
- The Hindu
CPI(M) criticises Thirumavalavan for comments on conservancy workers
Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) founder and president Thol. Thirumavalavan has stirred a controversy over the issue of job permanency for conservancy workers, questioning whether advocating for their regularisation aligns with the ideals of social justice, or reinforces caste-based occupational roles. Mr. Thirumavalavan, who had previously voiced support for the demands of conservancy workers, appeared to shift his stance. He recently said: 'The correct stand would be to speak against job permanency. Should Dalit children be made to dispose of garbage? If we make their jobs permanent, who will take up those government jobs? How many are ready to do this job? The next generation shouldn't be made to do this work. Ensuring that they don't continue in these roles — that is social justice. Lakhs of people are still cleaning human faeces, scores are disposing of garbage. Should we say, 'Let them do these jobs, make them government employees, and give them pensions?'' His remarks drew criticism from Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretary P. Shanmugam, who challenged Mr. Thirumavalavan's position and urged him to clarify his stance. 'He is wrong about this. I know a girl whose parents were conservancy workers. They used their earnings to educate her — she earned a Ph.D. and is now a college professor. If her parents did not have permanent jobs, she might have ended up as a conservancy worker herself. Job security, economic opportunity, and other benefits helped them uplift their daughter,' Mr. Shanmugam said. 'No demand for hereditary continuation' Mr. Shanmugam clarified that no one had demanded the hereditary continuation of conservancy work. 'Nobody is saying that their children must also do this work. We are only saying that those who are doing it now should be given permanent jobs. If they are not made permanent, should they continue as temporary or contract workers? Contract work means lower wages, insecurity, and no protections. Their demands are entirely fair,' he said. Mr. Shanmugam also pointed out that caste-based occupational roles persist due to the influence of Sanatana Dharma. 'A particular community being confined to traditional jobs is because of this society's adherence to Sanatana (Dharma).If we ask conservancy workers to stop doing this job, what alternatives are we providing? Have the Union or State governments laid out any plans? If we advise them to quit garbage disposal, do we have a safety net or better opportunities for them?' he asked.
The Wire
15 hours ago
- The Wire
Bihar SIR: Amid Bizarre Voter Roll Irregularities, Conflicting Readings and Weather Complicate Scrutiny
Arrah, Bihar: Early one morning in the third week of August, a team of individuals had gathered around a wooden table at a street corner in Gausganj of Arrah town. They were huddled under a plastic canopy erected to provide shelter from the rain. Spread out on the table were sheets of paper pinned together: the printed voter list for booth number 103 of Arrah constituency, on the northern outskirts of town. They were cadres of the Communist Party of India (ML) Liberation, a registered political party in Bihar, which is part of the opposition Mahagathbandhan. Quyamuddin Ansari, a member of Liberation's Bihar state committee, was leading the team's effort to detect voter fraud, identify missing names or deletions and conduct door-to-door verification of the draft list. However, owing to monsoons, entire neighbourhoods are flooded, making physical visits challenging. Quyamuddin and his team – Vishwakarma Paswan and Himmat Yadav – have been pouring over the draft voter list trying to identify cases of fraud. In one instance, they discovered 24 voters registered at a single address – house no. 10 in the voter roll – and flagged this as a case of fraud. They reached this conclusion because there were Thakurs, Brahmins and Baniya names in the list, which they thought was odd given Bihar's caste realities: how could members of different communities live in the same home? Another giveaway of the alleged malpractice was a father-daughter pair of voters, with the father's age listed as 28 and the daughter's as 29! 'Fraud cannot be confirmed by house visits, it can only be unearthed by an intensive study of the electoral rolls,' says Quyammudin. He has recorded on his phone hundreds of testimonies of people who allege their names have been wrongfully deleted. The Wire could not independently verify the first instance of suspicious address for a couple of reasons: firstly, the locality where this particular house is located is flooded, making it difficult to visit. Secondly, the voter roll lists the house number without giving a corresponding address, making it difficult to find if one is unfamiliar with the area. Although the Liberation team are convinced these two cases are instances of electoral fraud, the matter is not so clear cut, and this highlights the difficulties of verifying electoral lists within such short time spans in inclement weather. The Election Commission uses notional house numbers for a variety of reasons, including when voters have left the address column blank. It started when the poll body started computerising rolls, as The Indian Express has pointed out, and it was during the shift to digitalisation that notional addresses became standard practice. The issue came into prominence when Rahul Gandhi said in a press conference on August 7 that of the over one lakh votes 'stolen' in Mahadevpura assembly segment in Karnataka, half of them involved address irregularities. Jagdeep Chhokar, founding member of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), in a phone interview with The Wire, said, 'There are multiple interpretations about address irregularities in voter rolls and the only way to verify is by visiting the house.' 'If you rely on political parties, they will show you what they want you to see,' he added. Regarding the father-daughter age mismatch, Jagdeep Chhokar said that these could be stray errors. 'One should look for systemic fraud rather than individual errors.' ADR is one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court that has challenged the special intensive review in Bihar. But that is easier said than done for multiple reasons. On August 9, the Election Commission replaced the draft voter list online with scanned images, making them harder to machine read and thus unearth large scale patterns of irregularities, Scroll reported. Secondly, although the poll body has given the list of deletions from the SIR voter list (65 lakh so far) it hasn't given a breakup of the reasons for deletion. There is no way of knowing how many names were struck off because they shifted, died or were duplicate entries. Without this information, it makes it that much more difficult for ground verification. Although the Supreme Court on August 14 directed the Election Commission to publish the list of deletions, along with reasons, teams on the ground are racing to unearth irregularities, given the short timespan and a pick up in the monsoon. The final voter list is set to be published on September 1. The case of Mintu Paswan was discovered by a Liberation team of fact checkers working in Gausganj. Mintu was declared 'dead' in the voter roll even though he is alive. In fact, Mintu travelled to New Delhi to appear as a witness in the Supreme Court to demonstrate how the SIR is deleting genuine voters from the rolls. In another part of Arrah, Sudheer Kumar is hunched over papers and notebooks in his office. Kumar is a member of Liberation and serves as the town secretary of Arrah. On his desk are a sheaf of A4 sheets containing voter deletions in Arrah town, along with reasons that the party has compiled with the help of whistleblowers in the administration. Liberation immediately formed multiple teams that fanned out across Arrah town with voter lists conducting physical verifications. It is difficult work. Arrah assembly constituency consists of 45 wards and 242 booths. Additionally, there are 12 gram panchayats. Till now, the party has only been able to detect 16 cases: six who were listed as 'shifted' in the rolls but are in Arrah, and 10 who were declared 'dead' but are alive. Of the 10, party workers have met with seven people, with three yet to be confirmed. Kumar and his deputy Randheer Rana painstakingly go through the 'dead' list and compare it booth wise to the list of deletions provided by the EC. If the names match then party workers are dispatched to the booth to verify the status of the voter, which they do in a variety of ways including talking to neighbours, obtaining and visiting the address and using the EC's voter helpline app. Complicating the process is the fact that parallel to SIR, the election commission has split polling stations. Ideally, there should not be more than 1,200 voters per booth, and when the number exceeds this, a new booth is created or the excess voters are shifted to another booth. In the process booth numbers change, adding to the confusion. For instance, on August 11, four people who were listed as 'dead' were found to be alive, of which three names were found in a nearby booth. Additionally, the block-level officers who did the bulk of the work of collecting documents and adding voters before the draft list was put out are not of much help. Most of them are burnt out, have resigned their posts or are simply not taking calls. 'It is difficult work. How many irregularities can we find over the next 15 days?' Kumar asks. He concedes that most people in Bihar have not yet made the link between SIR and citizenship, and that the opposition has not been able to explain it clearly. Liberation's core voter base in Bihar is among Dalits and EBCs, and according to the party, these are the very sections who will face the maximum voter deletions. Kumar says the BJP wants to finish Liberation in Bihar by eliminating their voters, just like they are 'finishing' Maoists in Chhattisgarh. 'Earlier, there used to be direct booth capturing, now it is indirect booth capturing,' he says.
Hindustan Times
21 hours ago
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