Left's stand on FDI a sham if it doesn't support motion: TMC

Trinamool Congress on Monday said Left's failure to support a no-confidence motion to be brought by it in winter session will mean that their opposition to FDI in multi-brand retail "is false and sham" and voiced hope that all parties would come on board.

"If the CPI(M) does not support our motion, it will mean that its opposition to FDI in multi-brand retail is false and sham," senior TMC leader and former Union minister Sougata Roy said after CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat virtually rejected TMC's appeal to support the no-confidence motion.

"This will be a clear delineation among political parties on a specific issue," Roy said, adding adding the matter concerned crores of people and was not a communal or a secular issue.

He was speaking after BJP leader Balbir Punj's assertion on Monday that his party welcomes Mamata Banerjee's plan to move the no-trust motion. Punj, however, said the BJP was keeping all options open in its endeavour to take the Manmohan Singh government to task for coming up with reforms hurting the sentiments of the common man of the country

On the question of joining hands with the BJP on the no-trust motion, Roy told PTI, "This is not Ramjanmbhoomi or any other religious issue.

"We know that by ourselves we do not have the numbers. That is why our party chief Mamata Banerjee has appealed to all political parties across the spectrum to support in favour of our motion."

Roy said Banerjee had announced the party's decision to move the motion on the issue of FDI in retail and other "anti-people decisions" of the UPA government.

Meanwhile, TMC's all-India general secretary Mukul Roy on Monday denied that Mamata Banerjee had called up Lok Sabha Opposition leader Sushma Swaraj seeking BJP's support for the motion as claimed by BJP leader Murli Monohar Joshi yesterday.

"Till this moment this has not happened," Roy, a former Railway minister, told PTI.

"But there is no harm in one political party speaking to another. The chief minister has made it clear that it is the anti-people policies of the UPA-2 for which we will move this motion," he said.