No more alliance with UPA: Prakash Karat

New Delhi, Jul 31: Prakash Karat, general secretary, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) on Thursday, July 31 said that there won't be any future alliance with the Congress and said emphatically that the Left would continue to combat the government in Parliament.

He said: "It is all over with the Congress. We will not go with the Congress-led UPA even after next polls." Karat also made it clear that Bahujan Samaj Party Chief Mayawati was not their prime ministerial candidate for the coming polls. He said: "Our current relationship with the BSP is an electoral adjustment." "We have not decided yet," Karat told the Malayalam channel Kairali TV in Thiruvananthapuram, when asked if Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati was their candidate for the top post. He stressed that the current alignment was not a third alternative and that the third alternative would be based on the Common Minimum Programme.

The Left parties withdrew its support to the UPA government over Indo-US nuclear deal. According to Karat, the government had given the Left an assurance that it would not go ahead with the India-US civil nuclear deal - even if it had been allowed to carry forward the negotiations with the India specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"The assurance was given at a meeting which was attended by the prime minister, (Congress chief) Sonia Gandhi and (External Affairs Minister) Pranab Mukherjee," he told.

The general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha are scheduled for May 2009.

ANI