CPI's K. Narayana writes for DC: Mahakutami is best bet for elections

The Communist Party of India, being a national party, will always draw its political and poll strategies with a national perspective.

Though the party also takes into consideration local issues, the guiding force behind its decision on choosing allies for this election is the defeat of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

As part of this, the CPI took a conscious decision to join hands with the CPI(M), the Telugu Desam and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and go to people as the Mahakutami. The combined vote strength of all the four parties is more than that of the Congress and each of us have strong organisational bases in the districts.

There are no desertions from the party and this indicated that the entire cadre stood behind the leadership once the decision to join the alliance was taken.

The alliance will convince people on the need to dislodge the corrupt and pro-rich Congress government both at the Centre and state. We will enlighten the electorate on how the Congress has deliberately been scuttling separate Telangana and Scheduled Castes categorisation. We will ask the electorate to clear the stumbling block — the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy — or the two issues will never reach their logical conclusion. The Chief Minister made us believe that he was sincere in his poll promise of distributing land to the landless poor. Because of our efforts, the government appointed the Koneru Ranga Rao committee which studied the issue and made some suggestions.

Little did we realise that the Chief Minister would make use of the same recommendations to forcibly take land from the poor and give away the same to rich industrialists and realtors.

The CPI launched a struggle for land and people in large numbers participated in the agitational programmes. The government stooped to the level of arresting me on charges of treachery (raja droham) for seeking justice to the landless poor. The Jalayagnam could have been a noble scheme but the Congress resorted to corrupt practices while awarding contracts.

We have faced questions on changing our stance towards the TD since we had fought against its anti-people policies earlier. We do believe that Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu has changed.