Badal with communal leader for power, says Brinda Karat

Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP Brinda Karat acknowledges chief minister Parkash Singh Badal as a mature leader but she also accuses him of latching on to a communal leader for power.

Speaking here on Sunday, she condemned Badal's allying with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in spite of knowing that his credentials were not secular. She held a rally at the local railway station before heading to the ancestral house of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar house to pay homage to the freedom fighter on his martyrdom day.

She said that if the BJP came to power, it would make the nation cry as its senior leaders. "The people who made it a frontline party are being treated as nobodies," said. On a question about sulking BJP veteran Jaswant Singh, she said: "I sympathise with Jaswant Singh, a man robbed by own party, but the CPM has no more ticket to give in Rajasthan and no plan to induct anyone."

Karat accused Modi of robbing Gujarat's Punjabi farmers of their land. "The party guided by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) wants to polarise votes in the name of religion, and the Congress is the other side of this coin. The country has lost faith in both," she said.

Rules out alliance with AAP, Manpreet

Showing full faith in the strength of the Third Front, she said the CPM was ready for coalition with anyone of same ideology except the Aam Aadmi Party or Manpreet Singh Badal. "The AAP has no ideology and no issue of national importance," she said, not responding to a question on the front's PM candidate.

Regretting the bad condition of the ancestral house of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar, she said the CPM would support the cause of compelling the British government to amend records to take the tag of "terrorist" off martyrs Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru.

On her visit to Punjab, she said the party had a strong base in Punjab and Ludhiana.