CPI(M) rubbishes Gouriamma's claim of LDF wooing her

CPI(M) today rubbished the claim of JSS leader K R Gouriamma that the LDF had invited her to join the front as its Chief Ministerial candidate before the 2006 assembly polls despite her party being a constituent of the Congress-led UDF.
Gouriamma, once a firebrand Marxist leader before she was expelled from the party in 1990s, had said on Sunday that she rejected the offer and told those who approached her to explain why she was thrown out of the CPI(M) in the first place.
CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan termed Gouriamma's claim as "abusurd."
"Would anyone believe that our party is in a helpless situation to make a person who has been expelled by us as our chief minister candidate?" he said.

Gouriamma, however, stuck to her stand holding that it was CPI(M) leader Thomas Isaac who held discussions with some of the JSS functionaries.
Terming Gouriamma's claim as "quite amazing", Isaac said as a legislator from Alappuzha (home district of Gouriamma) he would had talked to her and her party functionaries several times. But this would not mean that he had asked her to return to the CPI(M), he said.

The nonagenarian leader, who was minister in most Left governments right from 1957, made this claim while addressing a district meeting of the Janadhipatya Samrakshana Samiti (JSS), which she floated after her expulsion from the CPI(M).

She regretted that despite spurning the LDF's offer and staying firm with the UDF, the latter could not ensure her victory in the assembly polls.
Since the 2011 assembly polls, when the JSS failed to win a single seat, Gouriamma loyalists have been at loggerheads with the UDF, though the party had not yet officially severed the partnership with the ruling coalition.