'JD(U) walked out of NDA due to irresolvable contradictions'

With the Nitish Kumar government winning the confidence vote in Bihar, CPI(M) today said JD(U)'s decision to walk out of NDA was due to its "irresolvable contradictions" with the BJP.

"The BJP, acting as the political arm of the RSS, has chosen to consolidate its own social following by projecting Narendra Modi with all its consequent implications of aggressively pursuing the hardcore Hindutva agenda.

"The more the BJP seeks to consolidate itself on these lines, the lesser is its capacity to draw allies in order to muster required numbers following the next general elections to form a government. This irresolvable contradiction itself contributes to the current political churning process," senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said.

Observing it was "ironical" that L K Advani was being projected as the "moderate and liberal face of the BJP", he said it was his 'rath yatra' that "left behind a bloody trail of communal riots and had sharpened communal polarisation to dangerous levels, grievously threatening secular democratic foundations of the Indian Republic", leading to the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.

However, Yechury pointed out that developments like JD(U) walking out of NDA, internal dissensions in BJP over Modi and UPA government being reduced to a minority, were completely alienated from the miseries of the majority of the people.

UPA-II has been reduced to a minority, bereft of all major Congress allies barring NCP, with its survival "crucially dependent" on outside support of SP and BSP.

Similarly, BJP-led NDA has been left only with two allies - Shiv Sena and Akali Dal, he said in an editorial in the next issue of CPI(M) organ 'People's Democracy'.

While such developments would keep contributing to the political churning in the run-up to the 2014 general elections, "what is not getting sufficient attention of these major political parties and their formations is the increasing burdens that are being heaped on the people."

Yechury, who earlier stated that no alternative to Congress and BJP was possible without the Left, said Left parties would ask all non-Congress non-BJP secular democratic parties to work for an alternative policy trajectory, focussing on the crucial issues affecting the people.

The Left parties, at a national political convention here on July one, would focus on issues like price rise, unemployment, the land question, "brazen" corruption and "big sops" being given to big business. This would be the direction in which "the current political churning must move."

"Such an alternative policy trajectory will necessarily have to be evolved in political opposition to both the Congress and the BJP," he said, as the developments facing the Congress and the BJP appear "completely alienated from the woes and miseries of the vast majority of our people.

"The people are looking for relief from the burdens that are continuously invading their already low levels of livelihood."

The CPI(M) leader said any relief for the people was only possible "when the current neo-liberal policy trajectory is replaced by a pro-people alternative policy trajectory.

"It is equally clear that such an alternative policy trajectory is beyond both the Congress and the BJP given the commitment of both to neo-liberal economic reforms and proximity to US imperialism."