BJP pushing Modi ahead as he is businessmen's darling: Karat

CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat today said the BJP was "projecting" Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate as he was the "darling of big business houses".

"The corporates see Modi as the only person who can help them reap windfall profits by nakedly pursuing capitalist development path," he said, inaugurating a seminar held in connection with the golden jubilee celebrations of CPI-M's ideological journal 'Chintha' weekly.

He said RSS was backing Modi to the hilt because his ascension to leadership would only mean an initiation of hardcore communal agenda in the coming days.

Karat said BJP was 'precisely not the alternative' to the Congress-led UPA at the Centre as both parties had the same views on the anti-people neo-liberal policies.

"The BJP is more ardent in the case of reforms in the economic sector. The party is conspicuous by its silence on the UPA government's decision to double the price of natural gas, which is meant to help Reliance," he said.

The country was heading towards an economic crisis with the liberalisation process that began two decades back with its manifestations seen in all sectors. GDP growth has fallen below five per cent, industrial production and exports were falling and the value of the Rupee was coming down.

The unemployment rate has risen to 10.2 per cent in the last two years and prices of essential commodities were soaring. Agrarian distress was being witnessed across the country, now pushed to a 'dead end' with the blind pursuit of neo-liberal policies, he said.