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Tuesday, Jun 03, 2008
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Left discussing ways to distance itself from UPA

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: Leaders of the four Left parties supporting the UPA government from outside are discussing ways to “distance” themselves from it, general secretary of the All India Forward Bloc Debabrata Biswas told The Hindu over telephone from Udamsinghnagar in Uttarakhand on Monday.

“It is true that the very purpose of the UPA-Left Coordination Committee has been diluted. But we [leaders of the Left parties] have also been discussing how we can distance ourselves from the UPA and there is need for us to adopt an alternative strategy,” he said.

Mr. Biswas was reacting to the Revolutionary Socialist Party’s decision to withdraw from the coordination committee.

“Ineffective body”

Secretary of the West Bengal Committee of the CPI(M) Biman Bose said here that the coordination committee had virtually turned into an ineffective and defunct body.

Nandagopal Bhattacharya, senior leader of the CPI and member of its national secretariat, said time had come to review relations with the UPA government “that has failed to abide by the Common Minimum Programme despite the Left’s repeated reminders to it.”

“Each party has the right to decide on its course of action (on withdrawing from the UPA-Left coordination committee) but had all the four Left parties made such an announcement jointly, the political impact across the country would have been greater,” Mr. Biswas said.

Political evaluation

The purpose of providing support to the UPA, which was to check the communal forces such as the BJP from coming to power “has now been frustrated which makes it important that all the four parties sit together immediately for a political evaluation of the present situation,” he added.

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