The Hindu : Front Page : DIC(K) issue not to figure in next Polit Bureau meet

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Saturday, Dec 03, 2005

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DIC(K) issue not to figure in next Polit Bureau meet

Staff Reporter

Party drawing up development agenda

PALAKKAD: General secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Prakash Karat said on Friday that the party Polit Bureau would take a final decision on the issue of an alliance between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran) before the next Assembly elections in Kerala.

Talking to mediapersons at his ancestral house at Elappully, near here, on Friday, Mr. Karat said the next Polit Bureau meeting scheduled to be held in December-end would not discuss the LDF-DIC(K) tie-up issue. But it would be decided before the coming Assembly elections.

He said the party would draw up a development agenda for Kerala by conducting seminars and other deliberations, as the LDF was expected to regain power in the State in the Assembly election next year.

To a question on whether the party was trying to impose the `Bengal model' on Kerala, the CPI(M) general secretary said there was no question of imposing any model on Kerala. The State had its peculiarities and hence it needed a model of its own for overall development. At the same time, successful models of other States could be applied in Kerala too, he said.

No FDI in core sectors

Mr. Karat said the Left would oppose Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in core sectors such as banking. But, it would welcome FDI in the manufacturing sector. The FDI was now mainly flowing into the share market, he said.

Disinvestment

Replying to a question on the Government's claim of Left support for disinvestment in public sector units other than the `Navaratna' companies, the CPI(M) general secretary said the Co-ordination Committee meeting of the Left Front would take a decision on the matter.

He said though India had signed a strategic treaty with the U.S. recently, the country was not bound to go by U.S. interests.

He said the Left would watch the Government's stand in the next meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's nuclear programmes in March.

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