The central committee of the CPI(M) is currently in session in Kolkata to finalise its draft political resolution for the coming Party Congress at Hyderabad from April 18 to 22 this year.The 91 wise members of the CC are supposed to assess the latest political developments including the outcome of the recent assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal and also the taking over of the Congress Presidency officially by Rahul Gandhi. The CPI(M) has now to deal with this 47 year old fifth generation Nehru dynasty representative and the CC members have to decide whether they could deal with Rahul and his policies and work out a sort of collaboration to fight the BJP and the saffron forces unitedly in the2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The issue is of urgent importance to the future of the Indian nation as only a total understanding of the secular and democratic forces can fight back the saffron juggernaut at this stage. The Left may be numerically small in Parliament and the Party organization may not be in good strength in many states of the country but the Left gives that moral and policy strength to the struggle against the BJP policies and the Congress at this moment needs that badly to meet the onslaught from the BJP led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi has set the right tone at the far end of the Gujarat elections campaign when he called upon the CPI(M) and said that the party has to decide whether they will be collaborating with the Congress to fight fascist forces.
The new Congress President must have used the fascist word a bit loosely without going into its wide dimensions, but his focus was at the right spot. Without going into the intricacies about whether the BJP can be called fascist or not, the ground reality is that the Party at this stage can not be called fascist but the tendencies are being gaining ground and the target of the saffron camp is to build such a state by 2022.The fascist tendencies have to be fought from the very beginning and the communists take the leading role in fighting the fascist tendencies in that battle.They rally around other secular and democratic forces to build a broad front to fight and defeat the forces which encourage fascist tendencies through both parliamentary and extra parliamentary means as also through defeating the concerned party in the elections. After all, the BJP has been encouraging the fascist tendencies and saffronising the institutions including all pillars of democracy by being in power.If the Party can be unseated by joint efforts of the opposition including the Congress, regional parties and the Left, the power base of the saffrons get cut off and that ensures a big victory for the democratic forces.
The CC members at the crucial Kolkata meeting have to choose on which side of history they will be, They will take a leading role in intensifying the battle against the BJP in association with the Congress which is the main fighting political forces against the BJP in major part of the country or the Party will distance itself from the Congress and facilitate the process of BJP trouncing the opposition in 2019 and achieving its target of establishing Hindu Rashtra in 2022.Those who till the last CC meeting took a stand opposing the line of exploring cooperation with the Congress in all fronts including the electoral battle to fight back the surge of the saffrons, they should know that the situation has further aggravated in the last there months since the last CC meeting of October last year.The CC members who were in favour of the rigid line of the former general secretary at the last meeting, have to reassess their position and respond positively to the call of the present party general secretary for an all round battle, including the Congress against the BJP.
. The CPI has already made its position clear that the Left cannot defeat the BJP without the helpof other democratic and secular forces including the Congress. The CPI(M) has to take this line at the current CC meeting so that the signal goes to the Congress President who is waiting for the Left to join hands with him.CPI general secretary Sudhakar Reddy at the recent meeting of the CPI national council at Vijayawada said that the it was the time for all political parties and NGOs opposed to saffron forces to join hands and make all efforts to throw out the BJP government.With this objective in view, the entire central committee of the CPI(M) this time, has to extend full support to their general secretary’s intensive efforts to build a broad front to fight back the BJP and its allies.CPI(M) general secretary must be given free hand by the central committee to decide on how to go about in forming such a broad front including electoral policies.
2018 is the most crucial year as this will build the base for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP is rattled afterits reverses in Gujarat assembly poll.Rahul Gandhi is projecting the pro-people policies and in his recent speeches, he has distanced himself from the neo liberal policies. As a burgeoise party, the Congress will have major differences with the Left on economic policies but that cannot be the reason for distancing from the Congress at this stage of Indian polity when the core values of secularism and democracy are under threat by the BJP. Eight states are going for elections in 2018 and among these eight states, only in Tripura, the CPi(M) as a ruling Party will fight the elections on its own. But in other states, the Congress is the major party against the BJP and there is need for an all out understanding of the Congress with the other anti-BJP forces to defeat the BJP.The Left may think of putting candidates in some places where it has bases but in such a polarized scenario, in these states, the electoral fight will be limited to the Congress led front and the BJP led front keeping the scope of other parties to gain any success.
That way, the best way is to have some informal understanding of the Left with the Congress in some seats of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh where the Left has got bases. In other seats, the Left can support the Congress against the BJP. Maximum efforts must be on ensuring one single opposition candidate against the BJP. The task is tortuous but not impossible.The primary task is to defeat BJP and pull down Modi government in 2019 and for ensuring that, the best possible means have to be adopted. Trinamool Congress MP Derek Obrien in his recent book has mentioned about the mechanism of putting one common candidate against the BJP in 2019 elections. This can be examined.
In sum, the battlelines are drawn and to make a success of that at both policy level and electoral arena, the Left has to play a critical role in imparting mojo to the opposition front.So long, the CPI(M) general secretary’s hands were tied as he had no majority in the CC. The Congress president has good confidence in the leadership acumen of Yechury, Sudhakar Reddy and D. Raja. Sudhakar is ready, if Yechury can take the CC with him at this Kolkata meeting, that will give a big push to the process of buildingbroadbased opposition unity against the BJP. A firm understanding between the Congress, Left and regional parties on a minimum programme is quite possible now and that should be the basis for a sustained battle against the BJP in 2018 and 2019. For the CPI(M) CC members, this is the moment of truth.They have to show their sense of history. (IPA Service)
The post Broadest Anti-BJP Front Is The Need Of The Hour appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
