Inaugurating the delegates meet at the CPM state conference here, Karat asserted that the Congress would need to seek a people’s mandate in the next Lok Sabha polls if it wanted to have a strategic truck with the US, since “no government that CPM and the Left supports would be allowed” to go for that.

Karat, who earlier ruled out the immediacy of a national third alternative, said in his speech today that the CPM was wedded to the idea. He said the CPM did not want the third alternative to be just an ad-hoc pre-poll arrangement, but a cohesive front of like-minded parties with a minimum common consensus in approaches and beliefs, with the three canons of anti-communalism, social justice and national sovereignty as its buttresses.

In his nearly two-hour-long speech, the CPM general secretary slammed the Congress-led Government for everything from its “pro-capitalist” leanings to allowing ISRO to launch an Israeli spy satellite, and claimed it was because the Left put pressure that the government had to go for “pro-people” legislation like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Forest Tribals Act.

The Left, he added, had also been able to rein in the government to some extent from going for policies like opening up of the banking and insurance sectors, privatisation of PSUs and the “unbridled entry” of MNCs in retail.

While shying off from directly commenting on the raging factional war in the Kerala party, Karat reminded the 552 state delegates to focus their attention in the debates over the next three days on “strengthening the unity” in the party, reminding them that the massive mandate the state gave the party in the last Lok Sabha polls also meant an onerous responsibility to keep up with the state’s expectations.