Left to build a non-Cong,non-BJP platform in polls: Karat

In a tactical move against Congress and BJP, the Left will seek to bring secular regional parties on a common platform ahead of Lok Sabha polls, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said today.

"In the coming Lok Sabha elections, appropriate tactics should be adopoted to defeat Congress and thwart BJP and strengthen the Left and non-Congress, non-BJP forces," he said.

Karat was making a presentation on "the political situation and the way forward" at a seminar organised by AKG Study and Research Centre here to mark the Jyoti Basu centenary year.

Setting out the twin objectives before the Left parties, he said they should lead the fight against UPA's "harmful policies and corruption" and pay equal attention to mobilise secular-democratic forces to combat the "disruptive politics" of RSS-BJP combine which is projecting Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.

Holding that Congress and BJP are two faces of the ruling class politics, he said there is a need to build an alternative to their "bourgeois-landlord" polices by rallying forces like regional parties around alternative policies.

Though most regional parties had no common political and policy positions and were prone to take stands based on their interests in the states conncerned, CPI(M) had been trying to draw some of them into joint action on common policy issues, the CPI(M) leader said.

He said UPA's return to power in 2009 was largely due to implementation of several pro-people policies during 2004-09 under the influence of the Left which had supported it then.

In contrast, UPA-II had a 'disastrous record' in aggressively pushing policies of 'appeasing' corporates and big businesses at the "neglect" of vast sections of people, he charged.

At the outset, Karat paid rich tributes to the memory of Jyoti Basu, describing him as a model Communist who showed how the parliamentary path could be utilised for the benefit of workers and peasants without deviating from the revolutionary path.