CPI urges Centre to halt 'senseless' Sensex boom

Seeks govt intervention to prevent accumulation of wealth by a handful.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) today asked the government to take urgent steps to stabilise the stock market.

Although the party shied away from suggesting the steps that could be taken, it sought government intervention to "prevent accumulation of huge wealth by a handful at the cost of pauperisation of the common man's hard-earned savings".

A resolution adopted by the party's national council, whose meeting ended today, termed the situation in the stock market as a "senseless boom".

The party said during the past one year, Rs 75,000 crore black money came to the Indian market via participatory notes. The party also reminded the government about the plight of the common people.

"On account of the boom in the stock market, Mukesh Ambani is able to earn Rs 40 lakh additional income per minute, but 800 million people in the country earn less than $2 a day, which means they live on 6 paise per minute," the CPI resolution said.

The party said the recent Sensex boom had nothing to do with higher production or the country's real economic development.

On Posco's Orissa project, the council said efforts to forcibly set up the project might lead to bloodbath. The council opposed the venture on environmental and economic grounds. According to the CPI, the Orissa government has "allowed Posco to construct a captive port, which will endanger the Paradip port".

"It is destroying thousands of acres of forest land which may create disaster for the cyclone-prone coastal villages of Jagatsingpur," it added.

The party said local people and the opposition parties should be taken into confidence to resolve these issues.

The CPI, echoing the CPI(M)'s political stand on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, asked the UPA government to place the matter before Parliament and then abide by the "sense of the House".

"We urge the BJP to join the debate and not disrupt the House," said CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan.

The UPA-Left committee on the nuclear deal is scheduled to meet for the last time on November 16. Bardhan said what happened next depended on the government.

Terming the nuclear deal "not in the interest of the nation", he said, "If the government moves ahead, our deicision will be in the interest of the people and the nation."