The Hindu : Kerala News : Forward Bloc’s warning to UPA

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Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala

Forward Bloc’s warning to UPA

Staff Reporter

KANNUR: Forward Bloc will withdraw its support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government if the latter goes ahead with operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal regardless of the decisions of other Left parties in this regard.

Forward Bloc national secretary G. Devarajan told reporters here on Tuesday that the party’s five MPs would withdraw support to the Manmohan Singh government if it decided to go ahead with the nuclear deal. Stating that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India (CPI) had backtracked from their earlier positions on the nuclear deal, he said that his party would take the decision of withdrawing support to the UPA government independently of other Left parties.

No mandate

Mr. Devarajan said that the Congress-led government had no mandate to implement the nuclear deal. The government should pay heed to the sentiments expressed in Parliament, he said adding that the government should focus on strengthening conventional energy sources in the country. The country’s energy requirement would be six MW of electricity by 2020, he said adding that generation of energy by nuclear reactors would be far less than the requirement at a huge cost.

On Nandigram

The Forward Bloc leader said that the incidents in Nandigram in West Bengal were a blemish on the Left parties. CPI(M) actions in Nandigram gave ammunition to enemies of the Left parties to attack them, he said adding that the Nandigram incidents were the outcome of the efforts to perceive developmental activities in a narrow sense. He, however, welcomed West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s acknowledgment of his ‘failure’ in Nandigram.

Mr. Devarajan said that his party was in the process of strengthening its presence in the State. He said the party had started activities in 12 districts. He said that negative votes had been electing governments in the State for the last two decades. He also said that the V.S. Achuthanandan government could not rise to the expectation of the people in the State. To a question, he said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was a spent force in the country.

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