Poll alliance with BRS: CPI to bank on seats where it has strength

Party’s State executive and secretariat meetings discuss alliance related issues

The Communist Party of India (CPI) State committee has decided to insist on allocation of seats where the party has considerable strength in the next election, as part of the proposed alliance of the Left parties with the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS).

The two-day meeting of the party’s state executive and secretariat discussed the issue elaborately and resolved to put forth its demand as and when the alliance talks begin. The development follows the recent announcement by BRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao that a majority of the sitting legislators would be retained in the contest for the elections when they will be held around this year-end.

The CPI had already resolved to join forces with the CPI (Marxist) in ensuring that there will be no mutual contests between the two so as to ensure there is no split in votes. “We will insist on seats where we have strength. We want seats, barring a couple of them here or there, in line with our strength in the constituencies where we have considerable strength,” a senior CPI leader told The Hindu. He said the party was firm that it should get respectable number of seats as part of the alliance.

Meanwhile, the party had decided to organise a month-long door-to-door campaign “int intiki CPI” from April 14. The programme was drawn up in line with the party’s recent national council meeting that decided to organise a nation-wide campaign to unseat the BJP from power.

CPI State secretary K. Sambasiva Rao said that there was a need to show the door to the BJP which had diluted statutory institutions and was doling out largesse to corporates.

While poverty and inequities were on the rise, the BJP government was destroying the public sector in the name of disinvestment or privatisation. In addition, it was using agencies like the CBI, ED and NIA to suppress voices of the opposition parties in different States. “As cases are being registered against leaders of the Opposition parties, no single case had been registered so far against the tainted BJP MLAs and MPs,” he alleged.

In this context, he faulted BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar for his reported comments against BRS MLC and Chief Minister’s daughter K. Kavitha, and lamented that Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan did not allow women leaders of BRS inside Raj Bhavan when they came to register their protest against the remarks.