Hyderabad, June 22: CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan today said a majority of partymen were of the strong view that withdrawal of support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government last year over the issue of nuclear deal did not cut ice with the voters.
Mr Bardhan, who was here to attend the State Council meet to discuss the poll debacle, told a press conference that ”it is not the timing of withdrawal of support (to the UPA Government) that cost the party dearly. The issue over which we withdrew support has not been understood properly.” He said many in the party were of the strong view that it had been difficult to go to the voters and explain the ill-effects of the Indo-US nuclear deal. They were of the view that withdrawal of support over everyday problem like price rise would have been appropriate.
”It is a fact that the deal hurts India’s sovereignty and the country’s independent foreign policy. We are correct in opposing the nuclear deal,” he opined. The deal did not figure prominently during the Lok Sabha poll campaign, he lamented.
Replying to a question, he said Left parties extending support to the UPA Government for about four years was not a reason for the party’s poor performance in several states. Pointing out that there were many state-specific reasons for the debacle, he said projection of seat-sharing arrangement in five or six states as a Third front did not click. ”We did not have much choice in the last election on alliances,” Mr Bardhan admitted. The CPI would work for a broader secular democratic front through struggles over people’s issues to project an alternative to the Congress-led UPA and BJP-led NDA.
Stating that the people had thoroughly rejected the ”communal” BJP in the polls, he said it did not mean that they had given a free hand to the Congress to pursue US-centric foreign policy and neo-liberal economic policies. It was the Left parties’ insistence that the previous UPA Government could not go all out to privatise the public sector undertakings, he added.
——Agencies