New Delhi: Seven years after the Left parties withdrew support from the UPA-1 government on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury acknowledged that the timing of the step was wrong and that the Left parties failed to make it a people’s issue during the polls, which saw the Left plunging into a crisis after their worst electoral performance in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
Mr Yechury was replying to a question on the decline of the Left forces, including the CPM, after the 2009 general election, and whether snapping ties with the UPA on the deal was a mistake. In an interview to a news agency, the party’s new general secretary said that in retrospect, the Left parties should have linked the withdrawal of support to the government to people’s issues like price-rise.
“We said that this was not the issue (to withdraw support). We reviewed it later. In hindsight, we have said we could not make it a people’s issue (in the elections). It should have been a people’s issue, like price-rise, and (from) the UPA-abandoning-the-aam-aadmi perspective,” he said.
