'CPM to focus on ousting communal forces'

RANCHI: Senior CPM leader and politburo member Sitaram Yechuri on Friday said the party’s strategy in the Lok Sabha elections would revolve around three core issues-ousting communal forces from power, deteriorating economic condition of the country and increasing representation of Left parties in the parliament.
Addressing a press conference here, Yechuri said the main agenda in the elections was to get rid of communal forces.Decrying the minority card played by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee recently by appealing to Muslims that there would be no more aberrations like Gujarat, he said even today Vajpayee hesitated to take action against Narendra Modi or the Gujarat government.
Elaborating on the government’s economic policies, Yechuri said though the government had a debt burden of around Rs 17 lakh crore and it is paying Rs 1.5 lakh crore interest amount every year, the government, nonetheless, claims that India is ‘shining’. He said this was one of the reasons behind widespread poverty and starvation deaths in the country.
Referring to the recent BJP function in Lucknow in which around 20 women died in a stampede during sari distribution, he said the function itself indicated the shallowness of BJP’s ‘India shining’ campaign. He asked what compelled the PM to distribute saris?
He also expressed his desire to increase the representation of the Left parties in the parliament by winning more seats in the 14th Lok Sabha elections. He said the representation of Left parties would increase to 50 seats from the current 42 seats, while secular forces would be able get around 300 seats.
Yechuri also took a dig at the Congress saying the party had not fulfilled its responsibility of being a secular force by fielding candidates against the MCC in Dhanbad and the RJD in Palamu. However, he said the BJP would find it difficult to retain all the 11 seats in Jharkhand.