CPI(M) smells 'plot' to tie down BSNL

Nigam staff plan a five-day strike from today.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) today defended Pratibha Patil, the UPA-Left-BSP candidate for the presidential polls, against allegations that she sheltered her brother, an accused in a murder case, and was the head of a company that defaulted on bank loans.

As the party's supreme body, the Central Committee, started its three-day meet here, Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said the allegations against Patil were "unfounded and reflected the desperation of the opposition in the face of a sure defeat in the presidential polls."

"It is only natural for the RSS-BJP and their proactive slander machinery to spring into action on such occasions," Yechury said before the meeting.

Yechury said Agriculture Minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar had made it clear that Patil's name did not figure anywhere in the Jalgaon murder case. He added neither was Patil the head of the sugar mill that defaulted on bank loans after turning sick.

Yechury said the party meeting, being attended by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who faced criticism for his handling of the Nandigram issue, would mainly finalise the venue and the schedule of the party Congress. Yechury said the West Bengal unit of the party would place a report before the Central Committee on the Nandigram episode.

Biman Bose, the West Bengal CPI(M) chief, said the "party had already started a campaign to bring normalcy in Nandigram."

Yechury said Nandigram, where a planned SEZ had been stalled, was "not a question of land acquisition now, it is a political conspiracy against the Left, like in Keshpur and Garbeta earlier. We will take on this challenge politically, as in the past".

He said the issue of vice-presidential elections was unlikely to come up at the meet, which would take up the the suspension of Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan and state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan from the Politburo.

Pinarayi attended the meeting while Achutanandan is expected to join in tomorrow.

The Central Committee is also likely to review the UPA government's performance on price rise, public distribution system, and the Indo-US nuclear deal in the context of the Hyde Act, which the party earlier described as "unacceptable".

The meeting is likely to reiterate the party's demand for extending the proposed Bill on social security to unorganised workers and issue a statement against the decision to hand over pension funds to the private sector.