Congress attacks Left for joining hands with BJP

NEW DELHI: Congress brought out the “secular” card once again, this time in an attempt to drive a wedge among the Opposition benches. In an attack directly targeted at the Left, Congress asked the “so-called secular” parties to demonstrate their ideological commitment to “secularism”.

The party attempted to remind constituents of the Opposition benches, particularly the Left, that making common cause with BJP tantamounts to a betrayal of the secular agenda.

This need to draw the secular card comes close on the heels of reports that the veteran CPM leader Basudeb Acharia and CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta had held a meeting with BJP leader L K Advani and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj in the closing days of the budget session in her chamber in Parliament.

The meeting was to work out a joint strategy on the civil nuclear liability bill just ahead of its introduction in the LS.
Congress said that any truck with parties like BJP is likely to give an impetus to communal politics reminiscent of the 1990s.

“With Congress emerging as the single largest party in the last general election, there has been a sense of unease among the Opposition. This has lead to a rebirth of the opportunistic anti-Congressism of the 1970s and 1980s, when disparate parties came together allowing for the rise of communalism. The price of which was paid in the 1990s,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.

The recently concluded budget session of Parliament saw concerted and unstated co-ordinated effort by the Opposition benches to take on the government. These efforts did not prove to be successful, it did serve to provide a few embarrassing and tough moments for the government.

The Left and BJP did not have any formal co-ordination, however on specific issues like the cut motion and nuclear civil liability bill, the parties had an informal co-ordination. Should this unstated co-ordination become an open tieup, the government could find it difficult to push through some important legislations in the monsoon session of Parliament.

“Will these political parties, who speak of secularism, stand up and tell the nation that the challenge of communalism is over? This is important because people should know that the protection of the idea of secularism now lies solely with Congress,” Mr Tewari said.

Congress argues that their “legislative co-operation” with BJP is qualitatively different from that of the Left. Congress sought to warn the Left that any such “legislative co-operative” actions with BJP could give a fillip to fundamentalist forces, at a time when “such forces are on the run”.

Congress reminded that while there may be differences between the two on several issues, the bulk of the UPA’s work has been “liberal and progressive”.

Interestingly, Congress raising the secular-communal divide comes at a time when the UPA government it heads has made several efforts to secure the support of the BJP to see through several legislations.

The government dispatched NSA Shiv Shankar Menon to brief the BJP leadership about the civil nuclear liability Bill. The women’s reservation bill was another such occasion when Congress reached out to BJP.