Next Cabinet meet in Tihar jail: Yechury

Criticising the ruling party for finding itself in the midst of back-to-back scams, Rajya Sabha MP and CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury compared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Ali Baba from the famed fable “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.”

“While there is Baba (Manmohan Singh) who is looking the other way, his Cabinet colleagues, the 40 thieves, are looting this country. There is a joke that is circulating in the corridors of power in New Delhi that the next Cabinet meeting will be held in Tihar Jail, where all the Central ministers will be lodged for looting the nation’s resources,” said Yechury.

Speaking at the inauguration of the 9th All India Conference of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the CPM, Yechury said over the last two Parliament sessions, both BJP and Congress were involved in “match fixing.”

“Both Congress and BJP have been involved in the mining scams. While the ruling party wanted to cover their tracks on coalgate, the BJP has been involved in the mining related scams in Karnataka. Unprecedented in history, the monsoon and winter sessions of Parliament, were stalled because of the scams the two parties were involved in,” he alleged.

The CPM leader also criticised the economic policies followed by the Congress, which increased the burden on the poor while leading to a hike in incentives for the corporate sectors. “There are 54 individuals who have a combined assets equal to 1/3rd of the nation’s GDP. At the same time, there are 800 million people who cannot afford three square meals a day. The government is following the mantra of subsidies for the rich and burden the poor,” he claimed.

He alleged that the BJP, with the communal clashes in Kokrajhar, Assam, and the subsequent exodus of the North-East community from Bangalore, was trying to polarise the vote banks.