Defending his decision to withdraw support from the UPA-1, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat on Tuesday made it clear that the Congress was as big an enemy for the Left as the BJP. He was clearly sending a message to the Bengal lobby. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose who
had been advocating a soft approach towards the Congress were sitting by his side when Mr Karat made these observations. “Congress still represents the bourgeois classes. Their anti-people policies were again betrayed in the petroleum price hikes,” he added. Mr Karat was delivering the Pramode Das Gupta Centenary Memorial lecture in the city.
While acknowledging that unlike the BJP, the Congress was a secular party, Mr Karat, however, attacked the Congress for its economic policies particularly neo-liberal policies which he termed as anti-people. Significantly, to justify his stand against the Congress, Mr Karat even supported the two back-to-back bandhs called by the Left parties against the Congress government’s decision of petro-products price hike. “It is incumbent on the Left parties to protest against the neo-liberal policy adopted by the Congress government.”
Mr Karat, however, conceded that “an alternative Third Front is not feasible in the present political context.”
This apart, Mr Karat who has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that it was the decision to pullout of the UPA-1 which had been the reason for the Left Front’s electoral debacle in the Lok Sabha and subsequent elections, again referred to “the mistakes made by the state government.” He was apparently hinting at the mistakes Mr Bhattacharjee made in his industrialisation overdrive.
Describing the Left-Front as the model coalition government for the entire country, Mr Karat said, “It is not so important that you made mistakes. What is more important that you have learnt from the mistakes.” Clearly, Mr Karat who had earlier pointed out that “the state-related factors” were responsible for the poll debacles in Bengal once again put the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in the dock for the setbacks.
The CPI(M) party boss has also made it clear to the Bengal party who had so far been reasoning that the aggressive anti-Congress line of Mr Karat eventually paved the way for the poll defeats would backfire in the extended central committee meeting to be held in August.