TRIVANDRUM, 7 September — The “fill-the-Jail” agitation of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) continued to paralyze the government offices in Kerala with the government directing the police not to make any arrests. , The stir entered the fifth day yesterday.
The agitation is scheduled to continue till Sept. 12. Protesters dispersed themselves by 5 p.m. when the office hours ended as in past four days. The efforts of the Kozhikode and Trivandrum district administrations to make alternate arrangements by drafting the staff to other offices also failed. Police had to use force when the agitators tried to barge into the Ernakulam collectorate.
The CPI-M politburo member and Kerala opposition leader V.S. Achuthanandan said the stir would continue till the state government refrained from accepting all terms of the Asian Development Bank for acquiring the bailout loan package.
He claimed that the ongoing agitation had made people aware of the dangers of accepting ADB conditions, ‘which are anti-poor and pro-rich’. “The UDF (United Democratic Front led by the Congress party) had mortgaged our sovereignty with the ADB,” he told reporters in Cochin. He said it was under the pressure of ADB that the government hiked the power tariff and later withdrew it in the face of public wrath.
The opposition leader said the state government had not been serious about his alternative proposal to solve the temporary crisis. The Antony government had not been able to generate even one mega watt of power additionally during its 15-month rule while the previous Left Democratic Front government, led by the Marxists, added 1,086 MW to the power grid by taking up various projects and augmenting generation from existing units, he claimed.
Achutanandan also alleged that the government has completely failed in checking the inflow of spurious liquor to the state.
Meanwhile, the factional feud in the Congress party has intensified with the rival camps warning each other against the move to isolate their men over the recent power tariff hike and its rollback. Information and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M.M. Hassan, a close confidante of A.K. Antony came in support of the chief minister while the party’s deputy leader in the state Assembly M.P. Gangadharan, a Karunakaran loyalist, criticized the move to corner Power Minister K. Sivadasan on the issue.
