Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Friday that the party is calling for a defeat of the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) in the polls.
“The BSP government has a record of misrule, has taken away thousands of acres of farm land forcibly and has set a record in corruption,” Mr. Karat said.
Clarifying that the CPI(M) had never projected BSP chief Mayawati as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the ‘Third Front' ahead of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, he said that it was just a perception created by the media.
“Our party called for a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative….there was no electoral understanding with the BSP,” Mr. Karat said of the 2009 polls, adding that never had the name of any Prime Ministerial candidate been announced.
“In U.P. today, when we are fighting elections we are calling for the defeat of the BSP, along with the defeat of the Congress and the BJP,” he said.
Mr. Karat was speaking at a press conference on the concluding day of the special session of the Central Committee of the CPI(M).
On being asked to comment on the recent controversy regarding the appointment of Justice R. A. Mehta as the Lokayukta of Gujarat by Governor Kamala Beniwal, Mr. Karat said that the BJP government there had been exposed in its failure to appoint a Lokayukta since 2003.
“The BJP has been fully exposed by the fact that they are demanding an effective Lokpal and Lokayukta, but in Gujarat there has been no Lokayukta appointed since 2003,” he said.
Now when a Lokayukta has been appointed, they are trying to stop it and have been unsuccessful so far, he added.
Criticising the Centre for failing to bring in an effective Lokpal Bill in Parliament and then failing to adopt it in the Rajya Sabha because it refused to allow amendments to the Bill, Mr. Karat pressed the demand that the government bring the Lokpal legislation with suitable amendments during the Budget session.
It is very clear that a united Opposition could have pushed through some amendments in the bill including making the selection process more broad-based with fewer government nominees and by allowing the Lokpal to have its own investigating agency, he said.
