(Address of Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary, CPI(ML) at the Inaugural Session of the 9th Congress of the CPI(ML), Comrade Ram Naresh Ram Auditorium (District School Ground), Birsa Nagar (Ranchi), 2 April 2013)

Members of the outgoing Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the Party, comrades from various constituents of the Indian Left movement, esteemed guests from the communist movement in Nepal, Bangladesh and Australia, friends from the Reception Committee, activists from various ongoing people’s struggles in Jharkhand, friends from the intelligentsia and media, and delegates and observers participating in the 9th congress of the CPI(ML),

It is a moment of great pleasure and honour for me to extend my revolutionary greetings and a very warm welcome to all of you. The campus of the 9th Congress of the CPI(ML) is dedicated to the memory of our beloved leader Parasji, Comrade Ram Naresh Ram, and the stage is named after Comrade Ibnul Hasan Basru, two members of the CC elected by the 8th Congress who are unfortunately no longer with us but their legacy will continue to inspire us in the days to come.

We meet here in the midst of a very challenging situation. Hugo Chavez, a towering leader of the international socialist movement of our times, died prematurely a month ago and his country will elect the next President on the coming 14th of April. At a time when socialism was sought to be discredited and declared dead in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chavez had rekindled the socialist imagination by tapping the storehouse of people’s strength and energy to take on US imperialism and project a vision of socialism pulsating with the spirit of participatory democracy. We are confident that the Venezuelan people who defeated the US-backed coup attempt in 2002 will once again defeat the US design to destabilise Venezuela and carry forward the shining legacy of their dear leader.

The US and its allies have now taken their war campaign to Africa even as Washington’s Iraq war has entered its second decade and the US-Israel nexus continues to target one inconvenient regime after another in the Arab world. War, colonisation and fascism have historically been the desperate escape-route sought by capital in crisis and once again we can see the global capitalist crisis threatening to escalate along this dangerous trajectory.

The crisis is however pregnant with great opportunities and glorious possibilities. Worldwide there is a renewed upswing in popular anti-capitalist assertion and anti-imperialist resistance. From the Occupy movement to anti-austerity struggles, from Tahrir Square to India Gate and Shahbagh, the air is once again thick with popular aspiration for change and progress. There is a definitive rekindling of the socialist imagination, and the Left is once again advancing in varied forms.

From the platform of the 9th Congress of the CPI(ML) we reiterate our solidarity with the international working class movement and with popular struggles for freedom, democracy, justice and socialism in every part of the world. We are very happy to have in our midst comrades from Nepal, Bangladesh and Australia and extend our warmest wishes to them for bigger victories in the coming days. We are also inspired by the messages of greetings we have received from comrades from Pakistan, Philippines, France, Greece and Venezuela. We look forward to developing closer ties of solidarity with progressive forces worldwide and especially in South Asia.

We are also happy that this inaugural session is being addressed by a broad spectrum of organisations of the Indian Left. Closer political understanding among various organisations of the Left and effective united action is the need of the hour. The Indian Left needs a new model of united struggle and we hope the coming together of such a broad spectrum of Left organisations and leaders in the inaugural session of the CPI(ML)’s 9th Congress will facilitate the process of building broad-based fighting unity of the Left. We also seek cooperation with a whole range of democratic forces who are engaged in fighting against the corporate-imperialist invasion of our economy, against the repressive measures of the state and against feudal, patriarchal, communal and sectarian violence.

Indeed, vast sections of the Indian people are daily exhibiting their readiness and resolve to fight for an end to injustice and oppression, for a more meaningful democracy with real rights for the people. In recent months we have seen powerful upsurges of the Indian people against corruption and corporate plunder and for freedom of women from patriarchal violence. The participation of more than 100 million workers in an unprecedented two-day general strike on 20-21 February marked a new high in India’s working class movement. And the peasant-adivasi resistance on the ground to the corporate land-grab offensive shows the depth of determination of the people. The Left and democratic forces must rise to the occasion and lead the people’s quest for an alternative to a decisive victory.

The scam-tainted and US-worshipping government at the Centre has lost all credibility and survives on outside support manipulated through a carrot and stick strategy – carrots of special packages and sticks of CBI raids. Yet it goes on inflicting blow after blow on the survival of the people. With elections approaching, we must get ready to vote out this regime of loot and repression. But it is not enough to vote out this government – we also have to vote out the government-in-waiting and give a fitting rebuff to the corporate-fascist clamour to make Narendra Modi India’s Prime Minister and replicate the Gujarat model on an all-India scale. We have to vote out the pro-corporate policies that have spawned such a huge web of corruption and put the resources of the country and the livelihood of the people at stake. We have to vote out this non-transparent unaccountable culture of governance and establish the principle of accountability and primacy of people’s welfare and people’s rights over every other consideration.

Jharkhand has been the most tragic victim of the politics and economics of corporate plunder. Since it was formed in November 2000, this resource-rich state which is currently under president’s rule has already had four Chief Ministers and all sorts of coalitions involving the BJP or the Congress on the one hand and various regional parties on the other. More than a hundred MOUs have been signed by these governments to satisfy corporate greed completely disregarding the interests and opposition of the indigenous and local people and making an utter mockery of the legal safeguards that are already in place.

In order to transform the state into a laboratory of loot, successive governments have unleashed brutal repression killing and jailing leaders and evicting the people. Comrade Mahendra Singh, the legendary CPI(ML) leader who had challenged this order of loot and repression was killed in a political conspiracy in January 2005 and till date the conspirators have not been brought to justice. Hundreds of our activists and elected people’s representatives have been implicated in false cases and many are in jail. Yet the movement has marched on and the fact that we are able to hold our 9th Congress today in Jharkhand is a testimony to the strength and resilience of the people and the revolutionary movement.

From the podium of the 9th Congress of the CPI(ML), we rededicate ourselves to the task of freeing Jharkhand and the whole country from the corporate clutches and securing the greatest democratic rights of the Indian people. We thank all our friends in the Indian and international communist and Left movement for their solidarity and encouragement. We thank all our supporters and well-wishers in Jharkhand and rest of the country who have extended their valuable support to enable us to organise this 9th Congress in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand which we have renamed for the occasion as Birsa Nagar in memory of Birsa Munda, the legendary fighter for freedom and emancipation.

The 9th Congress of our Party will discuss and adopt a series of resolutions and reports to guide our practice in the coming days. We will discuss the political situation in the country and major international developments, we will take a fresh look at our Party programme and take stock of the Party organisation, and we will adopt policy resolutions dealing with the working class movement, agrarian and other rural struggles, women’s movement, student-youth movement, intervention in panchayats, the urban work of the Party, media and culture and the increasingly important agenda of environmental protection and people-centric development. We will also elect a new central committee and a new central control commission to lead and regulate the Party in the coming days.

We hope with your cooperation and support the Congress will succeed in conducting its agenda successfully, equipping the Party with fresh ideas, energy and determination in fulfilling its responsibilities, the expectations of the people and the demands of the situation with all its strength.

Red Salute to our great martyrs and departed leaders!

Long live progressive international solidarity!

Down with imperialism! Long live revolution!!

Central Committee and Polit Bureau Elected by CPI(ML) 9th Congress

Com. Dipankar Bhattacharya (PB)

Com. Swadesh Bhattacharya (PB)

Com. Kartick Pal (PB)

Com. DP Buxi (PB)

Com. Rubul Sarma (PB)

Com. S. Kumaraswamy (PB)

Com. Ramji Rai (PB)

Com. Amar (PB)

Com. Arindam Sen (PB)

Com. Swapan Mukherjee (PB)

Com. Kunal (PB)

Com. Dhirendra Jha (PB)

Com. Janardan Prasad (PB)

Com. Manoj Bhakta (PB)

Com. Partha Ghosh (PB)

Com. Kavita Krishnan (PB)

Com. Prabhat Chaudhary (PB)

Com. Nand Kishore Prasad

Com. N. Murthy

Com. B B Pandey

Com. Rameshwar Prasad

Com. Meena Tiwari

Com. S. Balasundaram

Com. V. Shankar

Com. Malleshwar Rao

Com. Bangar Rao

Com. Rajendra Pratholi

Com. Krishna Adhikari

Com. KD Yadav

Com. Saroj Chaube

Com. Shubhendu Sen

Com. Mrinmoy Chakravarty

Com. Sanjay Sharma

Com. Kalyan Goswami

Com. Abhijit Mazumdar

Com. Sudhakar Yadav

Com. Rajaram Singh

Com. Raja Bahuguna

Com. Rajwinder Rana

Com. Gurmeet Singh

Com. Balasubramanian

Com. Bhuvana

Com. Shashi Yadav

Com. Mahboob Alam

Com. Ishwari Prasad Kushwaha

Com. Mohd. Salim

Com. Salil Datta

Com. Prabir Haldar

Com. Yudhishthir Mahapatra

Com. Mahendra Chaudhary

Com. Partho Karmakar

Com. Bibek Das

Com. Pratima Ingheepi

Com. Rabi K. Phangcho

Com. Anant Prasad Gupta

Com. Vinod Singh

Com. Rajiv Dimri

Com. Ravi Rai

Com. Ramjatan Sharma (Ex-officio member)

##########

Central Control Commission Elected by CPI(ML) 9th Congress

Chairperson

Com. Ramjatan Sharma

Members:

Com. Devendra Singh Chauhan

Com. Vidya Rajwar

Com. Sukhdev Prasad

Com. Amalendu Choudhary

Com. Chandramohan

Com. Chiranjeeb Bhattacharya