CPM draft political resolution rules out truck with Congress

The CPM unveiled its draft political resolution on Tuesday ruling out an electoral understanding or alliance with Congress or be part of any national coalition for the Lok Sabha polls while keeping open options to have ties with regional parties in states.

The battle within the party is now moving to another level, with warring factions led by general secretary Sitaram Yechury and his predecessor Prakash Karat trying to consolidate their position before the Hyderabad Party Congress in April.

Yechury's supporters are planning to use the two-month window to move amendments in the Party Congress and garner support for their line of keeping options open to have an understanding with the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress.

The Karat-led faction had managed to trounce their efforts in the Central Committee meeting last month, which finalised the draft.

Acknowledging that the "fascistic" RSS-controlled BJP has "consolidated its political position" in the country and that "there cannot be a line of treating both the BJP and Congress as equal dangers", it said the main task is to defeat the BJP and its allies by rallying all secular and democratic forces.

However, the CPM feels that "this has to be done without having an understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress".

Though it ranks the Congress better than the BJP as both are parties of "big bourgeois-landlord classes", the CPM draft questions the Congress' secular credentials, too, saying it "professes to be secular but it has proved to be incapable of consistently fighting the communal forces".

Another problem cited is the Congress' neo-liberal economic policies for its anathema to the Grand Old Party.

However, it is ready to cooperate with the Congress and other Opposition parties in Parliament on "agreed issues".

It would also cooperate with "all secular Opposition forces" for a broad mobilisation of people against communal threat and wants joint actions of class and mass organisations, to "draw in the masses following the Congress and other bourgeois parties".