Nuclear Thread - 3

[acharya]

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CPI(M) cautions UPA against BJP ‘designs’</b>

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Cautioning the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) about an “emboldened” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nurturing hopes of returning to power, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Thursday regretted that the secular government at the Centre formed with the Left’s outside support “is providing grist to the mill of the communal forces due to its faulty policies.”

The CPI(M) asked the government to abide by the Common Minimum Programme (CMP).

In an editorial in the party organ People’s Democracy it told the government not to bank on its support if it violated the CMP.
“Adhere to CMP”

“It is high time that the UPA government scrupulously adhered to the Common Minimum Programme and worked for its implementation in right earnest, instead of passionately pursuing issues like the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal which do not figure in the CMP,” the editorial said.

Reminding the government that the Left parties extended outside support to it on the basis of the CMP, it said, “this support, therefore, cannot be taken for granted, if the CMP is violated.”
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The BJP nurtured hopes of a return as the government had “largely squandered” opportunities to strengthen the secular democratic dispensation and to work for significant improvement in the people’s livelihood.</b>

Lamenting that many a promise in the CMP “remained on paper”, it said even those which were implemented, under pressure from the Left, “suffer from bureaucratic hurdles and corruption.”

The editorial warned the government that the RSS and the BJP were gearing up to unleash a fresh offensive of “communal polarisation” in the run-up to the general elections in the hope that the polls would come earlier than scheduled.
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“The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani has clearly spelt out that after the Ram Sethu controversy and the issue of the hanging of Afzal Guru, the Amarnath land row will be the third of their communal planks to be exploited for electoral gains,” it cautioned.</b>

Observing that the BJP had identified three ‘I’s — Inflation, Internal security and Incompetence of the UPA government — as its main mascots, the CPI(M) said that in the 1998 election campaign, they had projected three ‘B’s — ‘bhook, bhay, and bhrashtachar’ (hunger, fear and corruption) — promising to eliminate them.

However, in its six-year rule it only “compounded each of these issues,” the CPI(M) said.