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| Jyoti Basu for continuance of UPA government | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, Apr 25:
Marxist veteran Jyoti Basu's most significant advice to the Left parties: Do not pull down the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Manmohan Singh. The advice assumes tremendous importance at a time when some Left leaders want to withdraw their support to the Congress-led coaliton government at the Centre.
Jyoti Basu has urged the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and other leftist parties not to topple Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive Alliance government right away. Addressing a trade unions convention in Kolkata, Basu said that the time is not ripe for withdrwing support to the UPA government.
Analysts say that Basu's advice is a shot in the arm for the Prime Minister battling CPI(M) hardliners and other left parties like CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc on several economic and political issues.
“Some people want to withdraw support now. But, in my opinion, the time is not ripe to snap ties. It is true that the Congress is not abiding by the UPA’s common minimum programme despite our protests. But we have to be patient and mount pressure on the Congress", Basu says. Having opposed the Congress for 45 years, the Left has to shore up a coalition led by it at the Centre because the BJP has to be kept at bay, according to Jyoti Basu.
People’s Democracy, a CPM publication, wrote this month that the UPA is cleverly using the bogey of BJP to get the Left's support. It added that the Left's suppot should not be taken for granted and threatened to snap ties. The Left’s main grouse is that the UPA is not sticking to the ‘minimum common programme’ arrived at before the Left agreed to support the Congress-led coalition and repeated reminders have fallen on deaf ears.
The Left attributes the recent victories of the BJP-led NDA in Uttarakhand and Punjab as well as in the civic elections in Mumbai and Delhi to non-fulfilment of the minimum common programme by the UPA. The CPI wants the support to be made ‘critical’ and based on ‘issues’. The RSP and the Forward Bloc believe it is time to become ‘equidistant’ from the BJP and the Congress while exploring an independent ‘third course’.
But Jyoti Basu's line has some takers. “Political equations will change after the Uttar Pradesh polls. The coordination committee of the four Left parties will finalise Left-UPA relations after the polls are over in May”, said Forward Bloc secretary Debabrata Biswas.
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