Manmohan invited by CPI to deliver A B Bardhan memorial lecture

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, whose economic policies have been severely criticised by the Left parties in the past, has been invited by the CPI to deliver the second A B Bardhan memorial lecture here on Tuesday.

Communist Party of India general secretary S Sudhakar Reddy defended the party's decision to invite Singh, saying the coming together of secular-democratic forces was more important than differences over economic policy.

"The CPI, for quite sometime now, is propagating a board platform for Left-secular-democratic forces, intellectuals, civil society... and we feel that the former PM Manmohan Singh has been rightly invited for the lecture," Reddy said.

Activist-journalist P Sainath will also speak at the event. The first A B Bardhan memorial lecture was delivered by veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta last year.

The lecture has been instituted in the memory of veteran CPI leader A B Bardhan, who passed away in 2016.