The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Pursuit of third alternative on track, says Yechury

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Pursuit of third alternative on track, says Yechury

Special Correspondent

‘Strategy is to keep communal forces out of power’

Bid to prevent non-BJP parties from rushing to Congress
No decision yet on seat-sharing with the BSP

Kochi: Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury has said that though the shape of electoral alliances that the CPI(M) would have in different States is yet to take concrete shape, the party’s efforts to forge a non-BJP non-Congress alternative to achieve its main objective of keeping communal forces out of power is well on track.

Indicating that the CPI(M) strategy is to simultaneously keep the communal forces out of power and prevent non-BJP parties from rushing to the Congress, Mr. Yechury said here on Thursday that the CPI(M) had covered some ground in forming a non-BJP, non-Congress alternative by entering into electoral tie-ups with parties such as the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, TDP in Andhra Pradesh and the Janata Dal (S) in Karnataka and initiating discussions with various other parties elsewhere in the country.

Mr. Yechury, who was briefing reporters about the deliberations of a three-day CPI(M) Central committee meeting which began here earlier in the day, said no concrete step had been taken so far on seat sharing with the Bahujan Samaj Party, though the two parties had identified key issues on which there could be joint struggles. To a specific question on the TDP initiating a dialogue with the TRS in Andhra Pradesh, he said the CPI(M) had not foreclosed the option of its allies having electoral understandings with third parties with which it was not fully in agreement. The TRS was an ally of the Congress at the time when it and the CPI(M) were electoral allies, he pointed out.

The CPI(M) Central committee, he said, would discuss current developments at the national and international levels, the economic crisis and India’s responses to it, political developments within the country, the proposals for strengthening mechanisms to fight terrorism and the coming elections in the course of the coming two days.

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