Maintaining that there was no Modi wave, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Saturday said it was anti-Congress wave which could favour the regional parties and the Third Front Government coming to power is very much a possibility. “It is clear now that there is a strong anti-Congress trend which is being misinterpreted as a Modi wave. This anti-Congress mood will benefit the regional parties as well,” Karat told reporters.
He said: “The 11 parties that we brought together have not allied with either the Congress or the BJP. Depending on the results of the poll, we will be able to bring them together.”
Eleven regional parties, including Samajwadi Party, JD(U), AIADMK and BJD and the Left, had decided in February last to forge a coalition as an alternative to Congress and BJP at the Centre. Karat said that it was then decided that each regional party would strive to maximize their strength in respective states, help each other wherever possible and pool in their resources after the elections. “We are hoping to do business with these 11 parties and few more parties could join the grouping,” Karat said. To a query on the AAP joining the Third Front, Karat said that it is up to them to decide.
Accusing the BJP and Sangh Parivar of creating a “highly communally-charged” situation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar through their electioneering, Karat said that this was not being taken seriously by the Election Commission.
“These are the most highly communally-charged elections. In UP and Bihar, such a campaign was unleashed in the early 1990s. Below the veneer of BJP’s campaign about development and governance, there is a systematic communal campaign. RSS is in the fray,” Karat said.
To a query on the communal campaign allegedly being carried out by the SP in Uttar Pradesh, Karat said that the counter-communal remarks were a reaction to Sangh Parivar’s propaganda which has been happening since the SP came to power two years ago. Defending the SP’s track record of fighting communal forces in 1980s and 1990s, Karat said all the non-Left secular parties, including Congress, have their failings on this count.