Need to provide secular democratic alternative: Yechury

CPI(M) today said it was necessary to provide the people a secular democratic alternative based on alternative policies in the next general elections to garner the "strong anti-Congress mood" which has benefited BJP in the recent Assembly polls.
The people rejected Congress as "its record inspired no confidence" and BJP benefited due to the bipolar nature of politics in four of the five states which went to polls, senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said.
In an editorial in the forthcoming issue of 'People's Democracy', he said Rajasthan, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh "have for long had a bipolar situation with the two parties - the BJP and the Congress - dominating the scene.

"The BJP was thus able to register a victory in these elections, being the beneficiary of the strong anti-Congress mood among the people."
In the BJP-ruled states of MP and Chhattisgarh, Congress "failed miserably in mobilising the popular discontent. The people refused to choose the Congress because their image and record inspired no confidence."
Yechury also said it would be wrong to conclude that the recent assembly poll results would be replicated in the 2014 general elections as these four states contributed only 72 seats, that is 13 per cent of the total seats in Lok Sabha.

"To extrapolate any national trend from these (Assembly) results would be erroneous. Both in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won a majority of these 72 seats, yet the NDA lost the elections," he said.

Unlike the four states where bipolarity exists between the Congress and the BJP, in the bulk of the other states, this was not the situation, he said.
"There the fight is between the Congress and the regional parties or the Left and in some cases, there is a situation of three-cornered contests," Yechury said.
Maintaining that the Congress-led UPA government was "reviled" for its policies which have fuelled rampant price rise and spawned massive corruption, he said, "The BJP has no policies which are different. What is required is to provide the people a secular democratic alternative which is based on alternative policies."

Observing that the emergence of the AAP in Delhi was a new feature, he said the Delhi results showed that wherever there was "a viable alternative to the Congress and the BJP, the people will support it."
"It remains to be seen what political programme the AAP will formulate and how it will consolidate its support base," the CPI(M) leader said.