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The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Thursday claimed S Jaipal Reddy has paid the price for "defying the country's biggest corporate" by being shifted out of the petroleum ministry and said this exposed "the tentacles of big business in the appointment of ministers".
"With this reshuffle, the process of putting persons in key economic ministries who are committed to corporate interests and the neo-liberal policies that the prime minister is bent upon pursuing has been completed," senior CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said in New Delhi.
In this context, he named several ministers who had been given crucial economic portfolios and said "all of them represent corporate interests."
Reddy "has had to pay the price for defying the country's biggest corporate. This episode has starkly brought out the tentacles of big business in the appointment of ministers," he said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of party organ 'People's Democracy'.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led India Against Corruption had on Wednesday alleged that the decision to shift Reddy from the key ministry was "under pressure" from the Reliance Industries.
Yechury said another "notable feature" of the Cabinet reshuffle was "the disdain shown by the Congress for the charges of corruption and dubious dealings of its ministers," he said, adding that with this exercise, the UPA government was now predominantly a Congress ministry.
"The reshuffle has put the Congress imprimatur on the big business-politician-bureaucrat nexus which is flourishing in the Manmohan Singh regime. More concessions to big corporates and foreign capital, more assaults on the livelihood of the people and more corrupt deals are in the offing," he said.
Such measures called for "more intensified resistance by the working class and all sections of the working people," he said, adding that the people "will have no other option but to ensure the exit of this government when the next Lok Sabha elections are held."
Image: Sitaram Yechury