UPA's Survival On 22nd July? And Aftermath

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‘Few in Congress at grassroots level know about N-deal’</b>

Staff Reporter

Photo: Lingaraj Panda

Awareness programme: Passers-by listening to CPI (M) leaders at a street-corner meeting held in Berhampur on Wednesday. —

BERHAMPUR: Very few grassroots level Congressmen know anything about the ‘anti-national’ Indo-US nuclear deal that their party was advocating, alleged CPI(M) activists at four-hour-long session of public meeting held by the party in the city on Wednesday.

It was an effort of the party to educate common people regarding the intricacies of the controversial nuclear deal which was being opposed by the Left parties. Party Orissa State secretariat member, Ali Kishore Patnaik, who was a major speaker in this open session on queries in the minds of common mass related to the nuclear deal, said he found more interest in the minds of common men about it as it dealt with the sovereignty of the nation. “But the members of political parties like the Congress who are supporting this deal before public at the orders of their high command know nothing about the realities of the nuclear deal,” he said.

The CPI(M) leaders elaborated how the Indo-U.S nuclear deal would place India’s imported reactors under perpetual IAEA safeguards and risk their permanent shutdown in case it failed to toe the U.S. line on foreign policy issues. They advised the younger generation to study the details of the controversial nuclear deal and educate the ignorant people living near them. “It is an irony that for many local Congressmen ‘Hyde Act’ is still related to something to ‘hide’ or to the Hyde park of London,” said Mr Patnaik. The district secretary of the CPI(M), Kalu Panda, and several district secretariat members like Kailash Sadangi, Ram Chandra Nayak and Basanta Nanda took part in this marathon meeting to educate people, which ended at around 7.30 pm.