INDIA bloc partners must introspect: MA Baby

Thrissur: CPM general secretary M A Baby on Thursday said partners of INDIA bloc should undertake an honest introspection whether they were able to adopt an alert, realistic, responsible and effective approach to achieve the broader objective of defeating BJP. "If they had taken such an approach, they would have been able to achieve a much better outcome in the last Parliament elections," Baby said while addressing a meet the press programme at Thrissur Press Club on Thursday.The CPM leader conceded that partners of INDIA bloc may have to contest against each other in some states like Kerala and West Bengal. "The prevailing diverse situations in the country would demand such divergences in tactics in different states. If we were able to limit such mutual contests to less than 100 seats, still we would have been able to field common candidates in about 450 seats. Even then we would have been able to cross the magic number — about 274 seats or so — required to win a majority in Parliament. We did make some gains by adopting such a strategy at a limited scale and we were able to avert the situation where BJP would have won absolute majority as a single party in the last elections. But performance of INDIA bloc would have been more impressive if all the partners adopted a much more realistic approach," Baby said."Even when INDIA bloc members are contesting against each other in a particular state, national leaders of each parties must refrain from falling prey to pressures of local leaders, to talk on highly local issues. The national leaders must think twice whether they should themselves dwell on such issues or leave it to state leaders. They must always keep in mind the need for maintaining unity of INDIA bloc. Absence of a deft and pragmatic approach had contributed to defection of former Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar from INDIA bloc to BJP," Baby said. He alleged that Congress and BJP leaders are continuously making totally wrong allegations and lies against LDF and chief minister. "Allegations of CPM-BJP alliance belong to this category. If Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels were to get a rebirth he will prostrate before Congress leaders like V D Satheesan or BJP leaders like Narendra Modi who are repeating the same lies assuming that people will eventually accept them as facts," he said. CPM district secretary K V Abdul Khader was among those who were present on the occasion.