KOZHIKODE, a city which marked many upsurge of people in the history, witnessed another massive rally of workers at the culmination of All India conference of the Construction Workers Federation of India (CWFI). Lakhs and lakhs of workers including women from the construction field pledged through their slogans in the huge rally to fight against the anti-labour policies of the incumbent government.

Every worker echoed the voice of the downtrodden people who are fighting against the neo-liberal policies of the central and various state governments. The rally adorned by various cultural events also drew the attention of common public. Hundreds of small rallies started from Kozhikode stadium ground and merged at Kozhikode beach. Various mass organisations greeted the volunteers all along the way.

A public meeting held on the beach was inaugurated by CPI (M) Polit Bureau member and Chief Minister of Tripura Manik Sarkar. In a scathing attack on the Modi-led NDA government in the Centre, he said that the government has cheated the people who voted them to power and hypocrisy of the government has been exposed within six months. There is no difference between BJP and Congress in terms of economic policies and both of them are competing with each other to implement the anti-people policies.

CWFI All India president R Sinkaravelu presided over the meeting. General Secretary Debanjan Chakrabarti, CITU state president and MLA Elamaram Kareem, V P Kunjikrishnan and P K Mukundan were among the speakers. WFTU deputy general secretary Valantine Pacho, Neil Andrews (England), Haas Nin (Egypt), Ajeeb (Egypt), Rabi ul Islam (Bangladesh) also attended the meeting.

The three-day conference elected R Sinkaravelu as president, Debanjan Chakraborti as general secretary and S B Karmakar as treasurer. Other office-bearers are Dipak Das Gupta, Malati Chittibabu, K P Sahadevan, Arakkan Balan, T K Achuthan, Thiruvallam Shivarajan, G Vikraman, V Umamaheshwar Rao, N Veeraswami, Nata Singh, Vijay Mishra, M H Sheikh, Sanyasi Dalui, Tarsam Singh Jodha, Ravindar Kumar (vice presidents); and K V Jose, B Hamza, P K Mukundan, K Balakrishnan, Kshetri Mayum Santa, R Kottam Raju, Pilli Narasimha Rao, Tapan Sharma, Harinder Singh Randhawa, Sudhirdas, Sukhbir Singh, Prem Gautam, Nirmal Roy, Suresh Raut Roy, Naba Mohanti, C Subbaiah, D Kumar, B Umesh, Pranab Majumdar, Sukanath Konar, Sujit Mukherjee, Subrata Mahapatra, Chinmoy Bhattacharya, Jagdish Sharma, Banwar Singh (secretaries).

Earlier, the conference was inaugurated by CITU president A K Padmanabhan at Dr. M K Pandhe Nagar (Tagore Centenary Hall) in Umanath Nagar (Kozhikode). The conference through resolution decided to launch a nationwide agitation raising the issues related to construction workers. Construction workers will observe a strike on June 1, 2015. In next April, a Parliament March will also be organised. As many as 49 delegates participated on the discussion over the report presented by General secretary Debanjan Chakraborti.