Left to play lead role in national politics

New Delhi, July 22: Elated over the ''humiliating defeat'' of NDA-backed independent candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat in the presidential poll, the Left parties today asserted that they were determined to play a decisive role in the management of the country's affairs in the run-up to the 2009 general election.

Over the next two years, the endeavour of the Left parties will be to build people's movement and bring together all the secular and democratic forces so as to provide a real third alternative, they said.

In an interview to the sources on the political fallout of the presidential poll outcome, the top leaders of the CPI(M) revolutionary socialist party said Ms Patel, who is all set to become the first woman to head the Indian Republic, made her presence felt in states like West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and Mizoram where Mr Shekhawat drew a blank.

CPI(M) General Secretary A B Bardhan made it clear that it was wrong to say that the Left consider itself as a balance of power on the national political scene. '' The Left is determined to play a very vital role in building a third alterative not from the angle of any 'bourgeois' consideration,'' Mr Bardhan said.

Elaborating on this, Mr Bardhan said the Left parties have been consistent in their approach to the creation of the third front and that any 'cut-and-paste formula' would not work as it is only for the electoral gains devoid of any principle and ideology.

The CPI leader complimented TDP leader and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for his categorical statement yesterday in this regard.

Mr Naidu, while talking to a TV channel on the outcome of the Presidential poll, had said the BJP's ''communal agenda'' and the Congress' ''pro-rich'' economic policies were not acceptable to the country.

Mr Bardhan said the Left parties were determined to build the people's alternative on the basis of the people's movement on the common man's concerns. CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and Rajya Sabha MP Brinda Karat blamed the BJP managers for what she termed ''doing a disservice to Mr Shekhawat by indulging in a very low-level campaign during the presidential polls''.

Elaborating on it, she said it was wrong on the part of the BJP to put up Mr Shekhawat as an independent candidate with the hope of getting support of the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA).

'' Now, the humiliating defeat they have suffered from the elected representives across the country and the BJP so-called 'vote of conscience' have got a defeating answer,'' Ms Karat said.

CPI national secretary D Raja said Ms Patel's victory is the demonstartion'' of the rejection of BJP politics and the electoral campaign.'' On certain suggestion in a section of the media that the Left has demonstarted its '' Freedom of Choice'' by first rejecting Congress' various choices for the President and ''forcing'' their choice for the Vice- President on it, Mr Raja said in a democartic set-up one could not undermine the strenght of 63 MPs of the Left parties.

''People have given us the mandate and we have to protect their interests,'' he asserted.

RSP national secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Abani Roy said the Presidential poll outcome showed that the national parties -- the BJP and the Congress -- were losing their political relevance day by day because of their anti-people policies.

'' This is high time that the Left not only showed greater unity among the constituent parties but also try to collect not only secular and democartic forces but regional parties as well,'' he added.

Mr Roy said if the Left failed to do this duty, which is the need of the hour, the country would have to pay a high price.

UNI