CPM demands net neutrality

Party accuses telecom companies of trying to sabotage it

Visakhapatnam: The 21st Congress of the CPI-M has declared its support to net neutrality, while strongly opposing the moves of telecom companies to violate the neutrality. The party also criticised the consultation document released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

A resolution adopted in the Congress said “neutrality of the internet has facilitated democratic collaborations of technology, content, communication and advanced innovations. Violation of such neutrality will defeat such advances.” The resolution said the telecom companies had been that they needed funds for building infrastructure to meet the ever growing demand. The companies had never revealed that their revenue from data services was multiplying -almost 100 per cent - during the last financial year.

The increasing profit alone was sufficient to build the additional infrastructure, the party members said in the Congress. Violation of neutrality would only provide the telecom companies a perverse incentive not to expand their infrastructure on the principal that “more the scarcity, more the profit. The resolution added that the people all over the world had been fighting the unholy nexus between the telecom companies and internet providers who had been trying to fetter the internet.

While the Competition Commission of India began investigations into the telecom companies violation of neutrality, the telecom regulator TRAI put out a consultation document in support of the telecom companies. The CPM congress appealed the people to defeat all such attempts to violate internet neutrality and limits peoples access to internet. The party also appealed to the government and the regulator to define the internet as a public utility service.

CPM reaches out to secular parties

Visakhapatnam: Politburo member of CPI(M) Sitaram Yechury has reiterated that the party would grow independently in strength and seek issue based support from liberal and secular parties. Briefing media on the resolutions moved in the 21st congress of the party, Sitaram said the draft political resolution called for independent strength of the party while stressing on the need for widening the ambit of the Left unity.

He said the draft also directed the party to actively work for rallying the Left and democratic forces so that the progress can be made in forging a left and democratic alternative. The political resolution also sought the party to counter the rightwing offensive ushered in by the Modi government and the BJP which required an intensified resistance to the aggressive pursuit of neo liberal policies by the NDA government and the broadest mobilization of the secular and democratic forces to fight the communal forces, the CPM leader said.