By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram : It’s high time the CPI-M starts introspecting on why there has been a series of failures in protests called by the party, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said Sunday.
“In the recent past, several protests called by them have flopped. It’s because they organise protests for the sake of organising and they lack conviction. They only have political interests and the protests do not take into consideration the needs of the people and hence they are bound to fail,” Congress leader Chandy told reporters at his official residence.
“Our government has done numerous things for the state and have seen that quite a few dream projects that were on the drawing board of successive governments all become a reality. People have realised what we have done and hence the CPI-M’s protests have all flopped,” Chandy said.
Sunday’s appearance was the first Chandy made after a week’s rest following complaints of mild angina.
A recent protest called by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) was an indefinite one against price hike.
After four days of agitation, the “indefinite protest” was called off following an announcement at the Congress meeting in Delhi that 12 cooking gas cylinders would be made available to all.
“All know that the decision to increase the number of cylinders had nothing to do with the strike being called by the CPI-M. There was a very poor response to their protests and hence they were forced to call it off under the disguise of the increase in the number of cylinders,” Chandy said.
The chief minister said another CPI-M decision that did not go down well with people was to boycott his mass contact programme.
In June last year, when news broke out about the solar scam in which three of Chandy’s staff members were found to have links with a con couple who cheated numerous investors by promising to deliver solar panels, the opposition Left declared a war against Chandy.
On two occasions, the Left launched indefinite protests on the solar scam case and announced they would not call it off till Chandy resigns, but in both cases the protests lost steam and were called off.