Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat and CPI national secretary D Raja on Wednesday hit the road, leading a jatha from here to Visakhapatnam against the naval exercise, involving the US, in the Bay of Bengal.

The jatha will be joined at Visakhapatnam on September 8 by a team from Kolkota, led by CPI general secretary A B Bardhan.

Launching the jatha after garlanding the statue of freedom fighter V O Chidambaram Pillai, who was imprisoned for floating the ‘Swadeshi Shipping Company’ during the British rule, Mr Karat said:  “The situation is similar to the one that prevailed when Mr Chidambaram Pillai launched a struggle against the British empire. We pledge that we will not allow India to become an ally of the US .”

Addressing a public meeting here on Tuesday night, Mr Karat strongly opposed the joint naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal involving India, the US, Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Mr Karat said of the 13 US naval ships participating in the exercise, nuclear warship Nimitz bombarded the people of Iraq which had close relationship with India. He said the joint exercise was part of defence pact which would make India a strategic ally of US. India had signed a defence pact only with US and not with other countries.

Mr Karat reiterated the left line that the Indo-US nuclear deal  was “totally unacceptable”. He said: “This is a minority government which exists only with the support of parties like us. So it should not go ahead with the agreement.” He said if it did, the Left parties would go to the people and tell them that the UPA government had failed to fulfil its commitment to the CMP.

Mr Karat said the Manmohan Singh government could have decided a time frame with the US government on implementation of the deal.