New Delhi: CPI today claimed corporates “manipulated and financed” the campaign to install the Narendra Modi government and said it apprehended attempts to concentrate all powers in the “hands of an individual” which would subvert the country's democratic polity.
“Massive amounts were spent by the corporates in the entire poll campaign to install a more pro-corporate government. From the beginning, they had made their preference clear.
Modi was their obvious choice for his pro-corporate record as a Chief Minister,” party General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy told a press conference here.
“Power has passed on to a combination of corporate, right-wing ideology and rabid communalism.
On the basis of the experience of the first three weeks of the (Modi) government, the party apprehend that attempts are on to concentrate all powers in the hands of an individual that may ultimately subvert parliamentary democratic set up,” he said.
Briefing on the CPI National Council meeting, he said the new government has “already started paying back the corporates by doling out several concessions including raising the price of extraction of gas from KG-2 Basin to the Reliance.”
“It is also heaping new burden on the people by raising rail fare, price of diesel, milk and gas,” Reddy said.
Alleging that the corporates had funded the Congress too, he said “regional parties were also liberally financed so that they do not tie-up with the Left (for a non-Congress, non-BJP front). The corporate sector targeted the Left parties to isolate and marginalise them.”
“Some regional parties were influenced not to have alliances with the Left,” Reddy claimed without elaborating.
He also said that the RSS “took over the command of BJP's campaign directly” and deployed its workers to “inject communal poison” to polarise the electorate.
PTI ARC At the three-day meet which analysed the “miserable failure” of the Left parties, Reddy said the BJP came to power on “a massive anti-Congress negative vote ... in the absence any other viable alternative. The vacuum created by Congress was big enough to get clear majority for BJP”.
The CPI leader lamented that the Left parties “failed to build an all-India platform to project alternative socio-economic programme”.
Asked whether the CPI top-brass accepted responsibility for the failure, he said the central leadership has taken responsibility for the poll outcome.
The CPI General Secretary said the “fallacy” of the electoral system was to allow a party or a combination to capture over 60 per cent of the seats, despite garnering only 31 per cent of the votes.
He said his party would continue to campaign for comprehensive electoral reforms, including introduction of some form of proportional representation.
Noting that the CPI representation in Parliament has become “minimal”, Reddy said the party would organise struggles outside Parliament The CPI's 22nd Party Congress, the highest decision-making body, would be held in March-April next year, the process for which, including meetings of the lowest level units, would begin from October.
