Karat Swears by No Post-Poll Truck with Congress
Crushing Congress hopes of a left turn after the polls Karat said the amalgalm of communist parties in India would not support the Congress “whatever the circumstances.”
The comments come amid rife speculations of the two parties coming together in the name of forming a secular government after the general elections climax in May.
The Left Front was a part of the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, before pulling the plug on the Manmohan Singh government after the Congress dug in its feet over the Indo-US nuclear deal.
The Left parties were strong in their opposition of the nuclear deal which they claim was not in the larger interest of the country.
The staggered five-phase elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament in India, get underway on Thursday.
The Communists would not support Congress even if it were the only way to prevent the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from coming to power, BBC Hindi service reported Karat as saying in an exclusive interview.
“That (preventing the BJP’s return to power at any cost) was our slogan in the 2004 elections. This time we are going to the people with an appeal to defeat the Congress as well,” he said.
Karat informed that the stance had already earned requisite approval from the party central committee.
The Left supported the Congress-led coalition for over four years after the surprise defeat of the BJP in the 2004 national elections, But Karat says the relationship was always rocky as the Communists disapproved of the economic reform policies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
He says that the Left amalgam stood by the Congress only to ensure that the BJP was kept out of power.
In 2008, the Left-Congress estrangement reached a point of no return after the Congress refused to share the details of the IAEA draft safeguards agreement with Left allies citing the classified information contained in the document.
The document, however, was leaked to media agencies minutes after it was submitted to the IAEA Board of Governors for approval.
Since the bitter divorce, Karat has repeatedly said that if his party had any influence in the next government, it would renegotiate – and if necessary – even terminate the nuclear deal.
“There is a clause in the agreement which allows either side to terminate the agreement,” he said.
Karat’s Third Front has a shared ideology on economic reforms and its opposition of the blooming indo-US ties.
Political pundits, however, say that the Left line on the US issue may prove to be its undoing, especially as the war in Afghanistan, the proxy battles in Pakistan, the Sinhala-Tamil battles in Sri Lanka and the Maoist regime in Nepal topped up with President Barack Obama’s urgent need for a stable ally in the region may see the Left challenge wilt over the next few weeks.
