CPM: Congress’ UPA-3 plan will not be successful

New Delhi: Even before the fruition of a grand alliance to beat the BJP, cracks have started to appear in the Opposition unity. The CPI(M) has now said that UPA-3 will not succeed.

“The Congress won’t succeed with another UPA experiment as it has lost all credibility and the best way to defeat the BJP in the next Lok Sabha elections will be to pool in all anti-BJP votes statewise,” said an editorial in CPI(M) journal People’s Democracy. Interestingly, the Left parties were present in a dinner organised by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi last week in the national capital to sh-owcase Opposition unity.

The party, in its draft political resolution released last month, ruled out an understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress to defeat the BJP. Instead, now it wants to pool in all-BJP votes statewise ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Giving examples of regional parties like the BJD, TRS and TDP, the CPI(M) said such parties would not accept to forge an alliance with the Congress. “There are many regional parties like the BJD in Odisha, the TRS in Telangana and the TDP in Andhra Pradesh who will not accept to be a partner in an alliance with the Congress. There are other parties who are chary of accepting the Congress as the leader of the alliance,” the CPI(M) said, naming itself as one of them.

Similarly, any effort to build a non-BJP, non-Congress “Federal Front” mooted by Telangana chief minister Chandrasekhar Rao was also bound to fail, the editorial warned. “Some regional parties like the DMK and RJD are with the Congress in their respective states. Further, there are many contradictions amongst the regional parties in terms of policies and regional interests,” the editorial said.