Cong can’t see beyond Amethi, Rae Bareli: CPI

NEW DELHI: As Uttar Pradesh seems to be heading for a six-cornered contest, the Congress is being blamed by CPI for ‘splitting the anti-Mulayam vote’. The CPI, which failed in its attempts to get the Congress on board the V P Singh-led Jan Morcha, on Monday alleged that the party has lost perspective in the state and stopped looking beyond Amethi and Rae Bareli.

Rahul Gandhi’s comments on the Babri Masjid demolition have angered the CPI, which had been trying to woo the Congress, Ajit Singh’s RLD and the CPM to support the anti-Mulayam front. Despite the Congress debacle in assembly elections in Punjab and Uttarakhand, the CPI leaders had approached Congress to forge a larger alliance around the Jan Morcha to defeat Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and the BJP.

“The Congress does not look beyond Amethi and Rae Bareli. It does not understand the severity of the communalism issue in Uttar Pradesh, which is why Rahul Gandhi made such a non-political statement about the Babri Masjid,” CPI leader Atul Kumar Anjan said.

The Congress MP had said that if a member of Gandhi family was in power, the Babri Masjid wouldn’t have been demolished. Dismissing this statement, Mr Anjan said it was Rajiv Gandhi’s ‘initiative of unlocking the disputed structure’ and the shilanyas that led to the demolition. (The locks were removed after a court order though.)

While the CPI is still holding talks with Mr Ajit Singh, the CPM has already entered a partial alliance with the Samajwadi Party, which has decided against contesting five of the 14 seats where the Marxist party is putting up candidates.

These five seats include the CPM’s sitting seats — Najibabad in Bijnore and Mejha in Allahabad. The CPM is trying to convince the Samajwadi Party to leave three more seats to it. Unlike the CPM, the CPI does not brand the SP as the largest secular force in the state and is of the view that secularism cannot be the only election issue.

Toeing an anti-Mulayam strategy, the CPI has not ruled out a post-poll alliance with the BSP. The CPI will contest at least 17 seats in alliance with the Jan Morcha. Though the two communist parties have adopted different poll tactics in the state, they are unlikely to clash in any seat.

While the blame game is on, the current political scenario in the state indicates that the assembly election is likely to be a six-cornered contest among the SP, BSP, BJP, Jan Morcha, Congress and the RLD.