Prime Minister Narendra Modi was planning to advance the general elections as part of strategy to pre-empt the Opposition attempts to firm up an alliance against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, CPI national secretary K. Narayana said on Saturday.
Addressing a press conference here, he said the BJP leadership was convinced with imminent defeat in the elections due in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in a few months. Hence the move to catch the opponents off-the-guard, he alleged.
Dig at Naidu, KCR
Branding Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and his Telangana counterpart K. Chandrasekhar Rao as big disappointment for the voters, he said both of them had misled the people with false promises. While Mr. Naidu kept mum on the Special Category Status for four years, Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao had failed to implement resolutions adopted in the Assembly for reservations for Muslims and categorisation of the SCs.
He strongly criticised the Centre for not implementing the commitments made in the AP Reorganisation Act and said the people would not pardon the NDA for not going ahead with setting up of steel plants at Bayyaram in Telangana and Kadapa.
‘PM owes explanation’
Mr. Narayana said Mr. Rao was trying to form Federal Front — a formation of political parties opposed to the BJP and the Congress — to further the interest of Mr. Narendra Modi. He said Mr. Modi, who had proclaimed that he should be shot dead if he failed to bring back black money parked outside the country within 50 days of assuming office, owed an explanation to the people why he had failed to do so till date. He said both demonetisation and the Goods and Service Tax (GST) had turned into miserable failure.
Asked whether the Third Front would become a reality, he said going by the results in Karnataka there was good scope for realignment of anti-BJP political forces to dislodge Mr. Modi.