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There will be no repeat of 2004 after Lok Sabha polls: Karat

Special Correspondent

KOCHI: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Friday that there would be no repeat of 2004 after the next general election.

Mr. Karat was inaugurating a rally, organised in connection with the ongoing CPI(M) Central Committee meeting.

There was no question of the CPI(M) and other Left parties supporting the Congress after its relentless pursuit of ‘anti-people’ economic policies that have caused immense misery to people, he said.

“In fact, if it were not for the stiff resistance offered by the Left to the disastrous economic policies of the UPA, the financial system in the country would have collapsed very much like in the U.S. and other countries,” he said.

The CPI(M) general secretary said the Left parties were working on a strategy to see to it that the next government would be one led by neither the BJP nor the Congress but by secular parties.

The Central Committee had resolved to go ahead with the current dialogue with various non-BJP non-Congress parties such as the TDP in Andhra Pradesh, AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the Janata Dal (S) in Karnataka.

Hits out at IUML

Mr. Karat criticised the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) for refusing to withdraw its Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed after Parliament passed a resolution expressing strong disapproval of the Israeli aggression on the Palestine people.

“It is a very good resolution and we welcome it. Now they must ask Mr. Ahamed to initiate the process to break the diplomatic relations with Israel. If Dr. Manmohan Singh does not do so, they must withdraw support to the UPA government. Then alone will the people believe the sincerity of the IUML in the matter,” he said.

Referring to the government’s resolve to fight terror in association with the U.S., he said the country would not be able to fight terrorism in the company of the U.S., which was fully in league with Israel and the main cause of terrorism. It was the U.S. which propped up the Pakistani military and the ISI.

On its part, the BJP was trying to use terrorism to further divide the people. The BJP and the sangh parivar were trying to put the entire blame for terrorism on the Muslim community, which was far from the truth as the country was faced with terrorism in different forms in its different regions, Mr. Karat said.

West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala Chief Ministers Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Manik Sarkar and V. S. Achuthanandan also addressed the rally.

Corrections and Clarifications

The seventh paragraph of a report "There will be no repeat of 2004 after Lok Sabha polls: Karat" (January 10, 2009) was "Mr. Karat criticised the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) for refusing to withdraw its Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed after Parliament passed a resolution expressing strong disapproval of the Israeli aggression on the Palestine people." It was an editing error. The sentence should have been "... after the IUML passed a resolution ...."

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