Tewari takes on CPI (M) over Tripura CM's invitation to PM Modi

With Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar inviting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address the state cabinet on his favoured theme of good governance, Congress leader Manish Tewari on Monday said the Communist Party of India (Marxist) must tell the nation as to whether this is an administrative invite or an attempt to try and possibly build some fences with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"Because after all there are two competing visions of India, one represented by the secular and the pluralistic parties of which the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been an integral component which believes in the secular and the pluralistic idea of India, and the other represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its ilk which believes in a very very narrow and a constricted view of India, a majoritarian view which is based on a religious denomination," Tewari told ANI here.

"So, therefore, under those circumstances there is a deviation from the fundamental principle on which the secular politics of this country is based then obviously the Communist Party of India (Marxist) must tell the people of this country as to whether this is an administrative invite or it is something more than that," he added.

The invitation from Tripura Chief Minister, who leads the sole surviving Marxist regime in the country, is being seen as a harbinger of a new trend.

Sarkar, who has been the Chief Minister of Tripura since 1998, had called on Prime Minister Modi in New Delhi earlier in August this year when he was in town for his party's central committee meeting.