Rajya Sabha member D Raja was selected unanimously as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) on Sunday. The veteran leader, who replaced S Sudhakar Reddy, is the first one from Dalit community to head the party.
Reddy stepped down due to health reasons and the recently concluded CPI’s National Council decided to select Raja.
Asserting that the party’s fight against “retrograde” forces would continue, Raja said, “The country is going through a critical period under the fascist regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Left might have lost seats in the Lok Sabha election and might have been reduced to a smaller force in Parliament, but it does not mean that we have shrunk within the country or our ideological and political influence has shrunk.”
Raja said the Left parties would continue to fight against the “retrograde policies” of the present government. “The BJP government may have won the electoral battle but not the social or the political one. We want all communist parties to come together. We will have to rework our strategies. That’s what our parties are trying to do,” he said.
Doraisamy Raja (70), popularly known as D Raja was unanimously chosen as Reddy’s successor at a three-day meeting of the CPI National Council, the top decision-making body of the party, earlier this week.
Reddy, who stepped down as the CPI general secretary due to ill health, was also present at the press conference. Raja hailing from Tamil Nadu was National Secretary of CPI for past 15 years and became Rajya Sabha MP in 2007 and reelected on 2013. His 12 year long tenure in Rajya Sabha is ending on July 24. His wife Annie Raja is also a CPI leader and is general secretary of CPI’s women’s wing National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW).