Streaks of Red surface in Varanasi

Left parties want to draw people towards politics that's issues-based than community-based

While haggling with a rickshaw-puller near the Kedar Ghat for a fare to the BJP office, they come in to sight. It was a group of not more than three dozen people, many of them greying, a few even elderly men, carrying red flags and marching briskly along the Godawlia-Lanka Road, the first motorable road running parallel to the ghats.

They were led by two men on a motorcycle, the elder of them, a Muslim, was on the pillion carrying the hammer-sickle-and-star flag of the Communist Party of the India (Marxist), or the CPI(M).

Those walking were holding flex banners and posters