Left member shooed away

The apolitical image of Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption came close to taking a hit when his associates called on stage a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), an ultra-Left political party to deliver a speech against corruption. Avishek G Dastidar reports.

The apolitical image of Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption came close to taking a hit when his associates called on stage a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), an ultra-Left political party to deliver a speech against corruption.

HT Image

But Kavita Krishnan, member of CPIM-L’s Central Committee was shooed away by the audience minutes after she started her speech. She started her speech introducing herself as a member of the CPIM and started on how the economic policies were behind fuelling corruption.

Several members in the audience soon started shouting, “We don’t want anything to do with any political party. Go away.”

Krishnan tried to carry on her speech ignoring the remarks but by then the furor had started. Seeing the audience’s reaction, civil society activist promptly turned off the mike and asked Krishnan to leave the stage. Krishnan was there at the request of the organisers.

A visibly upset Krishnan said this was unfair and that the audience deserved to know that many of her party colleagues were behind bar fighting corruption. “We are also fighting the same system that these people are fighting. So why this behavior? They shouldn’t have switched off the mike,” she told HT.

Audience members said that at the least Krishnan could have avoided introducing herself as a party member.