By IANS
New Delhi : The formation of a ‘third front’, proposed by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), will only help “communal forces”, the Congress party said Monday.
“Whenever the secular forces have been divided, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the communal forces have come to power,” Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan told reporters here Monday.
She said if the Left parties had any differences with the Congress, there was already a mechanism in place to sort these out. “The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Left parties supporting it have a common minimum programme as a mechanism for redressing issues,” she stressed.
She was reacting to CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat’s remarks Sunday, calling for a “third alternative” of non-Congress and non-BJP parties.
Commenting on Karat’s remarks, Natarajan said: “It is the right of every political party to form its own opinion and come to its conclusions. But the UPA (Congress-led United Progressive Alliance) government and the Left have performed magnificently till now and both should keep this in mind.”
Karat Sunday called the Congress “a secular bourgeois party though it often vacillates when communal forces take the offensive”. He stated that a third alternative should be formed of those political parties that are neither with the BJP nor the Congress and are in agreement on the economic, social sector and foreign policy issues.
The CPI-M-led Left parties are supporting the Manmohan Singh government from outside.
At present, some regional parties equidistant from the Congress and the BJP have floated a ‘third front’, United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA). However, most of its constituents had been aligned with the Congress or the BJP in the past.
Moreover, most UNPA members appear to be exploring options in order to be a part of the coalition that most likely would form the next union government.