erala Pradesh Congress Committee president V.M. Sudheeran has opened a new Facebook debate on the alleged ties between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] and the alleged attempt of the CPI(M) leadership to run a misleading campaign linking the Congress to the BJP.
To assert his point, Mr. Sudheeran has uploaded a photograph from 1989 on his Facebook page along with 11 questions on the CPI(M)’s alleged links with the BJP. Mr. Sudheeran has apparently tried to revive the decades-old allegations to reply to the recent allegations of Left Democratic Front leaders about a possible Congress-BJP understanding in the May 16 Assembly election.
Mr. Sudheeran raised questions in a chronological order beginning from the post-Emergency ties between the CPI(M) and the erstwhile Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP. His questions relating to the 1977 period were mostly on the alliance of the CPI(M) with the Janata Party, in which the Jana Sangh had merged soon after the electoral victory. Through the posers, he alleged that the CPI(M) and Jana Sangh leaders had campaigned for each others’ candidates in Uduma and Koothuparamba, which were contested by the then Jana Sangh leader K.G. Marar and Pinarayi Vijayan respectively.
The photograph he posted had A.B. Vajpayee, N.T. Rama Rao, L.K. Advani, V.P. Singh, Jyoti Basu and E.M.S. Namboodiripad. Mr. Sudheeran’s main thrust was to establish the CPI(M)’s alleged links with the BJP. Referring to the withdrawal of support to the first UPA government, Mr. Sudheeran asked the CPI(M) leadership whether it could deny the fact that the party had voted along with the BJP to bring down that government.
He asked the CPI(M) whether the party was not responsible for helping the BJP by splitting secular votes in the recent Bihar elections.
Through the posers, Mr. Sudheeran also alleged that the CPI(M) leaders had maintained a studied silence when the Lok Sabha discussed the allegations of Kirti Azad against Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely.
