Karat

New Delhi, July 31: Prakash Karat has discounted the possibility of the CPM supporting the Congress after the next general elections and parried questions on whether Mayavati would be projected by the Left and its allies as the candidate for Prime Minister.

Perhaps stung by suggestions that he had misgivings on supporting the BSP leader for the top post, Karat later told PTI: “I never said Mayavati cannot be Prime Minister. The party would decide at an appropriate time.”

The CPM general-secretary suggested in an interview to a Malayalam television channel that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not understand how the communist party functioned.

“We are going to call for the defeat of the BJP and the Congress. And, after that, if you think we are going to support a Congress government, I don’t know, I think people will accuse us of opportunism,” Karat told the CPM-backed Kairali TV.

“We are not parties like the DMK, RJD or the NCP. They are part of the UPA along with the Congress party. We cannot have any understanding or alliance with the Congress. We are in no way bound to support the Congress-led coalition. We will work with all the non-Congress secular parties — the non-Congress secular parties who are today not with the BJP or the Congress,” Karat said.

The CPM leader said the Congress leadership and the Prime Minister had assured the Left that they would not go ahead with the nuclear deal even if they were allowed to carry forward the negotiations on the India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Because they said they will talk and come back… ‘if you object, we will not proceed further’. Now when the Prime Minister, the Congress president (Sonia Gandhi) and the Congress leadership gave such an assurance, we thought yes, let them go, talk and come back. They are bringing this to the (UPA-Left nuclear) committee. When we object in the committee, they will not proceed. This is the assurance they have given us in November.”

Asked if the CPM has overestimated the trustworthiness of the Congress, he said: “It seems like that.”

Reacting to Manmohan’s remarks that the CPM leader had “miscalculated” the developments, Karat said: “The bourgeois party leaders look at their (party) practices in which the leader decides everything. They do not understand how the communist party functions.”

Karat said the Left parties had not yet taken a decision on who would be their prime ministerial candidate. “We have not decided yet,” he said, asked if Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayavati was their candidate for the top post.

Asked if he was saying Mayavati would not be projected as Prime Minister, the CPM leader said he was not ready to say anything as “it is too premature”.

Karat and RLD chief Ajit Singh today met former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda.