The Hindu : National : No role for Congress in government formation: Karat

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Saturday, May 01, 2004

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No role for Congress in government formation: Karat

By Our Staff Reporter

PATHANAMTHITTA, APRIL 30. The CPI (M) politburo member, Prakash Karat, has said the Congress will not have any role in the formation of the next Government at the Centre, but the Left parties will play a crucial part.

Mr. Karat told reporters at Thiruvalla today that the Congress' prospects were not rosy in the Lok Sabha elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka. The Congress was likely to get only five to six seats in U.P., from where its president, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Satish Sharma were contesting, and four in Bihar.

The CPI(M) had no faith in exit polls and its stand was that the predictions should not be announced till the entire election process was over. It was unfortunate that the Election Commission failed to agree with this, he said.

Earlier, addressing the LDF election meeting at Thiruvalla, Mr. Karat alleged that the farmers in the country were in distress owing to the wrong policies of the Vajpayee Government and that not less than 20,000 farmers had committed suicide. The Congress and the BJP were two sides of the same coin and the BJP was following the `anti-people' economic policy of the Narasimha Rao Government. The Congress had failed to oppose the NDA Government's privatisation of various public sector units, including even the profit-making ones. The education sector had been "commercialised" by the Congress and BJP Governments in States such as Kerala, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, he alleged.

The BJP's Hindutva and the "soft Hindutva policy" of the Congress in the North had made life miserable for the minorities.

"We saw the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, of the Congress touching the feet of sanyasins who were identified with the Sangh Parivar and the BJP," he charged. Hence, the Left parties should garner the maximum number of seats to preserve the country's secular and democratic credentials.

An alternative to the BJP and the Congress at the Centre was needed for fighting communalism and the `anti-people' globalisation and liberalisation.

Mr. Karat said the vote share of the Congress had come down from 42 to 44 per cent to 20 to 22 per cent which was a clear indication that it was losing its ideological and political base.

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