At the end of the three-day meeting of the Central Committee, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s highest decision-making body, the party in a statement said the main task before the 2024 general elections is to “isolate and defeat” the BJP. And to achieve this, the party will work with other secular Opposition parties but electoral arrangements must be State-specific, as the political situation varies with each State.
The Central Committee has listed out six issues on which it advises the Opposition to fight together - sharpening communal polarisation, poisonous campaigns of hate and violence, the Adani scam, misuse of central agencies, assault on federalism and demanding caste census. The Opposition parties should also have common protest actions, taking up economic and livelihood issues, it said.
The statement coming exactly a year before the next general election is silent on a possible anti-BJP electoral front. Instead, it stresses the need to have a custom-made strategy for each State to suit its political peculiarities. “In every State, depending on the concrete situation there, the secular Opposition must work out tactics to maximise the pooling of anti-BJP votes in the elections. As the situation varies from State to State these arrangements will necessarily be State-specific,” the CC statement said.
Amidst varied voices in the Opposition on the demand for a probe by a Joint Parliament Committee (JPC) into allegations against the Adani Group, the CPI(M) reiterated its stand arguing that “truth” can be established only via JPC. Trinamool Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) both have argued against the futility of a JPC, while Congress, AAP and BRS remain committed to the demand.
