Congress has started showing 'symptoms of decay': CPI(M)

The CPI(M) today said the Congress has started showing "symptoms of decay" and there was no realisation that the party has "steeped in corruption due to the nexus of big business and government".

It said there was a loss of credibility of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government in tackling scandals like the second-generation mobile telephony spectrum allocation issue.

"On the completion of 125 years of its foundation, the Congress party shows symptoms of decay which has set in due to the corrosive effects of becoming an instrument of the big bourgeoisie, naked for power and privileges, divorced from the problems and issues of the 'aam admi'," CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury said.

"There is no sign of realisation that the Congress party has become steeped in corruption due to the nexus of big business and government which has developed under its dispensation.

"The Congress leadership sees nothing wrong in having its ministers in government promoting the interests of big corporates and getting favours in return," he said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of 'People's Democracy'.

Yechury said this was reflected in its opposition to a joint parliamentary committee enquiry into the 2G spectrum scam as it "refuses to come to terms with the rot that has set in the higher echelons of the government.

"Faced with the avalanche of corruption and the loss of credibility of the Prime Minister and the government in tackling such scandals, the Congress leadership decided that offence is the best form of defence."

Referring to the speech of Congress President Sonia Gandhi at the Plenary here, Yechury said she had sought to put her party on "a high moral pedestal as far as corruption is concerned" by claiming to have taken prompt action in removing chief ministers and ministers even before corruption charges were established against them.

"What is not admitted is that the chief minister of Maharashtra and others had to be removed when it became untenable for them to continue in office in the light of mounting evidence of wrong doing," he said.

While Congress accused BJP of hypocrisy while talking about corruption and "correctly" pointed to the record of NDA government and the present BJP government in Karnataka, it has also accused the CPI-M too of actively indulging in corruption in states where it runs governments.

"The Congress party knows very well that not a single minister in the Left-led governments is facing a corruption charge," Yechury asserted.

Noting that the triumphant mood in Congress after the 2009 elections had "dissipated", he said relentless price rise, an intractable agrarian crisis and narrowing employment opportunities have "severely dented" its 'aam admi' platform.

Congress was also facing increasing problems like the revolt by Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh and the failure to achieve any breakthrough in the Bihar assembly elections, he said.