Cong urged to consider issue-based support

CALCUTTA, Jan 3: Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu today ruled out forging a front with the Congress in the current political situation, ...

CALCUTTA, Jan 3: Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu today ruled out forging a front with the Congress in the current political situation, but urged the party to “consider anew” CPI(M)’s issue-based support to it as the only alternative to the ruling BJP-led coalition at the Centre.

“Though we (CPI-M) are a small political party, we have greater political responsibility in the present national situation,” Basu said, addressing the 32nd anniversary celebrations of CPI(M) daily Ganashakti here.

Despite the Congress leadership’s declared stand of not initiating any move to destabilise the Vajpayee Government, the octogenarian West Bengal Chief Minister maintained his party’s issue-based support offer to the Congress “to form a Government at the Centre as the lone alternative and intermediate step in the present political situation.”

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“It is my firm conviction that there is no alternative to what we have offered to the Congress, since the Vajpayee Government will crumble as a fallout of internal feudsamong coalition partners,” Basu asserted.

Basu, who came down heavily on the BJP-led coalition for bringing the nation “to the brink of collapse” with its “disastrous” policies, alleged that “this uncivilised and barbaric Government at the Centre is out to dismember India.”