In what is being viewed as a direction-less start to its campaign for the coming Parliamentary elections, the left Front on Sunday dwelt on the hackneyed issues like installing a Third Front at the Centre.
Addressing an impressive rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, CPI(M) Politburo members Prakash Karat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee batted for a third non-BJP, non-Congress alternative insisting time had come when the people should install the Third Front in power so as to rid the country of “bourgeois capitalist interests.”
Attacking the Congress for giving the country “the most corrupt Government ever” and the BJP for “trying to create a communal divide to win elections”, Karat said “the only hope for the India’s poor people was the Third Front which would work on a given pro-poor programme.”
The BJP was no alternative to the Congress as “it will only carry forward the capitalist exploitation of the people like the Congress”, Karat said. Attacking BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for calling the Third Front a “third rate” front Karat said the saffron leader had “said the right thing as third rate in any case is the highest rate.”
Modi had from the same venue a few days ago attacked the proposed Third Front saying it was going to be an agglomeration of parties that had given third rate governance in their own States. The former Bengal Chief Minister on his part said the people of Bengal would never vote for Modi as “this would make you repent.”
Modi had in his Brigade rally asked the people of Bengal to vote for his party as that would ensure laddus (sweets) in both of their hands. “Here you would have Mamata Banerjee serving you and there in Delhi I will work for your development. There by you will have laddus in both hands,” he had said.
Bhattacharjee reacted saying “the people of Bengal would reject the offer of laddu as that would be of no use and they would have to repent for that.”
Though the rally tended to restore some lost honour of the left Front that had a couple of days ago lost three of its MlAs who switched over to the Trinamool Congress to vote for its candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections, senior Trinamool leader Mukul Roy said the rally lacked direction.“They assembled people but they could not show any direction. It was a directionless, principle less rally” Roy said.