Left favours Chatterjee as next President

New Delhi, May 1 (UNI) Left parties today threw broad hints that they would prefer to have Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee as the next President to pre-empt the BJP from installing its own nominee in the Rashtrapati Bhavan in July.

As part of their avowed aim to prevent the BJP nominee from occupying the Rashtrapati Bhavan in July, the Left parties gave indications that they would field Mr Chatterjee as the consensus candidate of the Left, the Congress, the SP and other regional parties.

" The Left will be happy if Mr Somnath Chatterjee is the consensus condidate," CPI leaders A B Bardhan and Shamim Faizi said adding that'' the Left have to work in collaboration with the Congress-led UPA coalition after the UP polls are over." In a wide-ranging interview to UNI, Mr Bardhan and Mr Faizi recalled that the Samajwadi Party had already committed its support to Mr Chatterjee's candidature for the country's highest constituional office.

Only yesterday CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat not only ruled out his party's withdrawing support to the Congress-led coalition at the Centre but also fired the first salvo against a second term for the incumbent President APJ Abdul Kalam.

They also dwelt at length on the possibility of re-emergence of the Third Front comprising the SP, AIADMK, and AGP among others, the crucial issue of their continuing support to the UPA government and other related issues.

Though informally, the Left parties are understood to have been discussing the issue at their joint meetings. The CPI(M), CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc are of the view that Mr Chatterjee is the befitting candidate for the august office. Besides the Left leaning intellectuals have also been pressing for the same.

Forward Bloc National Secretary G Devrajan, endorsing the CPI's viewpoint, said the Congress did not not seem to be in a position to field its candidate for the President's office as far as its numbers in both Houses of Parliament and the state assemblies go for the present.

" One thing is clear the Left can not go with either promoting Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to Rashtrapati Bhavan or granting a second term for Dr Kalam," the CPI leaders asserted.

Mr Bardhan, the veteran Communist and freedom fighter, said the UPA constitutents and the regional parties, who claim to be secular, had to join forces with the Left to find a Third consensus condidate.

On the review of the Left support to the Congress- led conglomeration at the Centre, Mr Faizi, the CPI National Secretary, made it clear that nobody wanted to destabilise the government." But at the moment the Left was supporting the UPA from outside on the basis of the CMP, which has been violated more than observed." " Is the CMP no more a sacrosanct document?" Mr Faizi, the editor of the party mouth piece ' New Age' wanted to know, making a case for "issue based" support to the government. The CPI leaders stressed that in that case the Left would be free to oppose it both in and outside Parliament.

On the reported " opportunistic" alliance of SP, AIADMK, AGP and TDP to bargain for the SP to recapture throne in UP in exchange for its support to install Mr Shekhawat in the Rashtrapati Bhawan, the CPI leaders said the Left had already ruled out such " day dreaming." Elaborating, Mr Devrajan said, the attempts by the BJP to muster support of the regional parties in the name of a non-Congress Third Front is obviously ruled out by the Left.

" The Left has also ruled out the argument for repeating the 1996 experiment of the United Front. No formation that seeks the direct or indirect support of the BJP can have the approval of the Left.. leave alone joining any such move," the CPI leaders added.

UNI