Ramoowalia with Left for Punjab Assembly polls

Chandigarh, Oct 15: The Punjab units of Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI(Marxist) and Lok Bhalai Party have decided to jointly fight the ensuing assembly elections in the state to consolidate and expand their respective bases and have their sizeable representation in the Assembly.

Lok Bhalai Party president Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, CPI state secretary Jagroop Singh, CPI(M) state secretary Balwant Singh in a joint press conference here today announced that the parties had finalised the broad contours of the joint election programme.

They said the programme consist of three cardinal principles.

About the principles, they said, ''We will work for the defeat of the Akali-BJP alliance which is communal, corrupt and has got worst anti-people record, secondly we will have no alliances or adjustment with the ruling Congress and will expose its anti-people policies, pursued under the dictates of WTO and their international financial institutions during the last four and half years and is marred by large scale corruption and finally we will build pro-people alternative policies for the interests of common and toiling masses for rapid industrialization and economic development of the state and to save democratic secular fabric of Punjab.'' They said their front is open to form an alliance with any like-minded parties.

Mr Ramoowalia said the election would be contested on the issue of development, which is not possible without proper power, employment, health, education and law and order situation.

These three parties further decided to organise joint activities and masss campaign oriented towards elections with immediate effect.

The concreate plan would be chalked out in the next meeting of these three parties to be held shortly.

UNI