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Calling Gujarat a model is dangerous, says Karat

Kolkata: The BJP’s description of Gujarat as a “model” is “dangerous for the entire country,” Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said here on Sunday.

Criticising the reported remarks of L.K. Advani after the party’s victory in the Assembly elections in that State that the BJP would “make all other States, the entire country, a Gujarat,” he said the party had reduced the minorities in Gujarat into “second-class citizens who were being denied the rights they are entitled to under the Constitution.”

Minorities were also under attack in States such as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, he added.

“Our party has made it clear that if the Congress cannot counter such communal forces then the Left parties and other secular forces will carry out a sustained struggle against them,” Mr. Karat said, while addressing the open session of the CPI(M)’s 22nd State Conference.

The Gujarat election results had made it evident that communal forces there had taken advantage of the general disaffection among the people.

In West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura where the Left parties were in power, “the BJP and other communal forces have not been able to raise their heads,” Mr. Karat pointed out. “The Congress has a lesson to learn from this,” he added.

Mr. Karat was also critical of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance for its economic polices, for deviating from the Common Minimum Programme and for capitulating to the imperialist designs of the United States of which it is “becoming a junior partner.”

Despite its claims of a nine per cent growth in the Gross Domestic Product in the country, the prices of essential commodities were on the rise and the government was apathetic to the conditions of the common people. There were severe problems in the agricultural sector “and no programme had been taken up by the Centre to mitigate the problems of farmers, two lakhs of whom had committed suicide over the past 10 years.”

While reiterating his party’s opposition to the any strategic alliance with the U.S., he reiterated its opposition to the Centre going ahead with the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal, opening up the country’s retail trade to multi-national companies as well as banking and insurance sectors to foreign capital.

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