By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
New Delhi: The CPI (ML) today released the list of its candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. The party will contest 80 seats in 16 States and 3 UTs. While two of the candidates are Muslims, 20 are from SCs/STs in reserved seats.
The party is going to take on both UPA and NDA as it has fielded half its candidates in Bihar, UP and Jharkhand. The party’s slogans will be: “Say No to Pro-Rich, Pro-US Parties and Policies – Resist Assault on Land and Livelihood, Democracy and Secularism – Vote for Self-Reliance, People’s Welfare and Democratic Rights.”
The party’s Muslim candidates are Mahbub Alam from Katihar (Bihar) and Sulaiman Hafizi from Raiganj (West Bengal).
The party will also put up dalit and adivasi or tea community candidates in a dozen general seats.
Releasing the list of the candidates today at Press Club of India in New Delhi, party leader Dipankar Bhattacharya said: “Nationally, the Party’s election campaign will be directed primarily against both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP-led NDA. Five years ago, the UPA had come to power in the name of the aam aadmi, but its tenure will be remembered only for its reckless pursuit of pro-corporate pro-US policies that have left the country reeling under all-round economic crisis and growing vulnerability to terrorism. The CPI (ML) will therefore appeal to the electorate to give a crushing rebuff to the UPA in the coming election much like the blow delivered to the NDA in the 2004 elections.”
The party’s poll campaign will also expose and oppose non-UPA non-NDA dispensations that pursue anti-people policies and attack democracy, e.g., the CPI (M)-led regimes in West Bengal and Kerala, and the BSP in UP, he said.