Karat defend his decision to support Pranab Mukherjee

New Delhi. Justifying CPI(M)’s support to Pranab Mukhejee for Presidential Election, Party General Secretary Prakash Karat has told that abstention from voting only meant “lining up” with Trinamool Congress.
“Abstention in this case would mean lining up with Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. This would be politically damaging and unacceptable. … It would (also) blunt the intervention of the party in the developing political scenario,” Karat writes in an article of forthcoming issue of Party organ ‘People’s Democracy’.
Karat’s views came close on the heels of the expulsion of a youth leader, Prasenjit Bose, who had protested CPI(M)’s support to Mukherjee saying it as a “grave error which will harm the party and disturb Left unity.”
The article also came in the wake of some Left parties like CPI, RSP and CPI-ML (Liberation), deciding to abstain from voting in the Presidential poll.
Observing that CPI(M) and other Left parties had been weakened since 2009, he said no illusions should be harboured that “the ruling classes will cease their hostile approach” against the Left, given their “unremitting position” against neo-liberal policies.