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Third Front has upset Congress, BJP: Karat

K.V. Prasad

— Photo: K. Ananthan

CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat addressing an election meeting in Coimbatore on Wednesday.

COIMBATORE: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Wednesday that the Left parties would not come to the rescue of the Congress if it fell short of the required number of seats to form the government at the Centre.

He was addressing a public meeting here to campaign for party candidate for the Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat P.R. Natarajan.

“If you think that the Left will bail you out, you are living in your own dream world,” he warned the Congress. He said the party was now speaking of possible Left support because of the realisation that it would lose the elections.

Mr. Karat said: “Do not talk just of the Left. Talk of the Left with All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, with the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh and with the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa.”

The CPI(M) general secretary said the United Progressive Alliance had almost ceased to exist. It existed only in the form of the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Almost all the former allies of the Congress were now fighting against it.

The emergence of the Third Front had upset both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. “That is why they are calling it an illusion.”

Targeting the DMK, Mr. Karat said: “One can understand why the DMK stuck to the Congress for the last five years. This is because its Ministers benefited a lot.” He cited the spectrum allocation issue.

The Congress did not speak of the nuclear deal with the United States now. Neither did the DMK, despite the fact that Tamil Nadu had been plunged into a serious power crisis.

After claiming that it worked for the “aam aadmi” (common man), the Congress had only pledged the country’s interests with the multi-nationals. There was no difference between the Congress and the BJP, as their manifestoes revealed, he charged.

Centre accused of ‘unclean’ deals

S. Sundar reports from Madurai

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, known as Mr. Clean, has been presiding over a government indulging in ‘unclean deals,’ CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat has charged.

She was addressing an election meeting on Wednesday.

The CPI(M) and Left parties had presented ‘damaging’ evidence in granting of licence by the Ministry of Telecom, to Parliament and the Prime Minister and sought a probe.

“We hope that those responsible will give an answer as to how a Prime Minister, known as Mr. Clean, presides over a government which has the most unclean deals?” she said.

Refuting the contention of the Congress leadership that the Congress and the CPI(M) had common ground on various issues, she said that it was the Congress and the BJP that had common ideology on economic polices – like foreign direct investment in insurance, privatisation of banks, destroying the public distribution system and high tax regime for petrol and diesel.

The Left parties were for implementation of alternative economic polices by an alternative government through the Third Front, she said.

Wheat export

Ms. Karat alleged that there was a clandestine deal to lift the ban on export of wheat and said that any such step, either for private trade or for buffer stocks, should be only decided by the new government to be formed at the Centre after May 16.

Warning against any such move, she said that it would deprive the people of cheap food grain. It would be nothing but a backdoor attempt to get rid of the buffer stock of food grains at a cheap price, she said.

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