No alliance between Congress, CPI in Singareni polls

While the Congress came to power in the State, CPI state secretary Kunamneni Sambasiva Rao won from the Kothagudem assembly constituency.

Peddapalli: The alliance between the Congress and CPI might not continue for the Singareni recognized trade union elections scheduled to be held on December 27.

Both the Congress and CPI jointly contested in the recent assembly elections. While the Congress came to power in the State, CPI state secretary Kunamneni Sambasiva Rao won from the Kothagudem assembly constituency. Though both the parties managed to enter the poll alliance to contest the assembly polls, they are unable to reach an understanding to fight jointly in the Singareni recognized trade union elections. Forget the alliance, both the parties are gearing up to fight with each other, party sources said.

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While the strong trade union in the company, AITUC, is affiliated to the CPI, the INTUC is affiliated to the congress party. Notwithstanding the poll alliance by Congress and CPI in the assembly election, both the AITUC and INTUC are contesting separately in the trade union election.

CPI’s efforts to convince its union to fight the election along with the ruling party union failed. Though the left party leaders had not ruled out the possibility of consulting with the Congress leadership to discuss the issue, AITUC was not interested in it unless INTUC came forward for an unconditional understanding.

With this, it has been cleared that there was no chance for talks with Congress and CPI and alliance between AITUC and INTUC, party sources said.

AITUC, which is quite strong in the Singareni region, was confident of winning the polls this time around. Buoyed by the victory of the Congress in assembly polls, INTUC is also leaving no stone unturned to capture the recognized trade union status by attracting miners.

So far, the elections for recognized trade unions in SCCL have been held six times since 1998. While the AITUC was elected as the recognised union twice, TBGKS got elected for two terms. INTUC was elected once.