Under attack Karat says central committee took coalition decisions

New Delhi, May 21 (IANS) Under fire for the Left parties' poll debacle and also for floating the Third Front grouping, which came a cropper in the Lok Sabha elections, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Prakash Karat Thursday said the decision to forge a non-Congress, non-BJP electoral alliance had been taken by the party central committee.

Karat, whose CPI-M got 16 Lok Sabha seats from 43 in 2004, said that both national and state level factors have to be analysed to find out the reasons for the party's poor show in West Bengal and Kerala.

'The central committee, in its meeting held in Kochi in January 2009, had worked out the electoral-tactical line and given the direction that the Left parties along with the secular parties should work together to make a non-Congress, non-BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) alternative realisable,' Karat said in the latest edition of the party mouthpiece, People's Democracy.

He said the projection of electoral understanding of both the CPI-M and the Communist Party of India (CPI) with some parties in certain states as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative was wrong.

'The CPI-M and the CPI had an electoral understanding with some of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and seat adjustments in Karnataka. On the basis of these state level understandings forged on the eve of the elections, we attempted to project them as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.

'The defeat of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and the failure of the alliance in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to win a majority of the seats undermined any effective presence of the Third Front at the national level.

'It is evident that such a combination which had its relevance in the concerned states was not a credible and viable alternative at the national level,' the CPI-M general secretary said.

Karat admitted that the CPI-M and the Left parties have suffered a serious setback with the electoral losses in West Bengal and Kerala.

'This calls for a serious examination of the causes for these reverses. We have to conduct a self-critical review to ascertain what are the factors which are responsible for this poor performance. Both national and state level factors have to be analysed,' he said.