GUWAHATI: The CPI-M is open to support a Congress government after the polls. The Left party while exploring possibility of a Third Front after the election results, is also keeping open the option of supporting a Congress-led government in the Centre after the election in case the need arises.
Informing this, senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury on Thursday said that the Left party’s support would be based on policy. He maintained that a Third Front could emerge in the post-counting scene and said any coalition before the elections may not stand together once the results were declared.
He pointed that no pre-poll coalition has come to power since 1977 and all coalition governments, from the one led by HD Deve Gowda to VP Singh to Atal Behari Vajpayee to Dr Manmohan Singh were formed after the results.
He said, “The USP of the CPI(M) is not anti-individual or anti-party, it is anti-policy. We have always lent support on the basis of policy and also insisted on a common minimum programme.”
Yechury said, “The 2014 polls is a watershed election because it will determine the future of the country. We are at the crossroads on the direction that India should go.”
Yechury said that the achievements claimed by the Congress in UPA I were actually moves pushed by the CPI(M), from the RTI to Right to Education to Food Security Bill to land acquisition laws.
He urged upon the people to vote for a government that will ease the burden on the livelihood of the common people and added the economic policies pursued by the current regime had to be jettisoned and alternative policies be put in place.
“We need to reverse the economic policies of the Congress as well as the BJP. The economic policy since Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government has created two Indias – one for the shining rich Indians and the other poor,” he said, adding, “the government is enriching the rich and improvising the poor.”
He pointed that there was no shortage of resources in the country but these were being used for providing concessions to the rich. He said the government must stop concessions for the rich, collect the legitimate taxes and use that money to build infrastructure.
MODI CRITICISED: Yechury accused BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi of seeking to consolidate Hindu vote-bank by choosing to contest from Varanasi in the Lok Sabha election. He also dared Modi to contest from anywhere else in the country, instead of confining to a ‘safe seat’, if the BJP was so confident of the ‘Modi wave.’
He also dismissed the ‘Modi wave’ as a media creation and questioned why there was so much of infighting in the BJP for seats if such a pro-Modi wave was indeed there.
He accused BJP of fielding candidates tainted in the Muzzafarnagar communal riots and said that people convicted by lower courts were continuing as ministers in Gujarat adding that the Congress was not any better.
“For every (Ashok) Chavan in Congress, there is a Yeddyurappa in BJP,” Yechury added.