Stating that the main objective of the Left is to defeat the BJP, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday said that the task is to build the broadest coalition of secular forces to achieve this goal.
Yechury, whose party is supporting former Trinamool Congress vice-president Yashwant Sinha as the opposition presidential candidate, said that to stop the destruction of the secular democratic republic that India is, opposition forces need to be brought together to fight the RSS and the BJP.
"The primary task is to isolate and defeat the BJP," he said, delivering the keynote address on the 109th birth anniversary of former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu.
He said that ahead of the presidential and vice-presidential elections, the primary issue was to find a person on whom the broadest number of political parties can unite.
Claiming that it is the immediate objective that has to be achieved, he said, "We cannot say why one is wearing a yellow shirt or a red shirt or what one did earlier." This is what was learnt from the workings of Basu and other top leaders of the party in his time, Yechury said.
The CPI(M) leader, apparently seeking to address issues within a section of the party in West Bengal on supporting Sinha as the presidential candidate, said the choice was made not on the basis of past, current or future credentials of a person but with a larger objective to attain the goals of the party.
"Whom we support is not the point but why we support is what matters," he asserted. He said that with the vice-president election also coming, the search is on for a candidate for whom maximum unity can be achieved.
Discontent among a section of the CPI(M) in the state was evident over the choice of the presidential candidate with lone party MP from West Bengal Bikash Bhattacharya having claimed that Yashwant Sinha, who is also a former NDA minister, is not the "best candidate" for the post but has to be accepted for the sake of opposition unity.
Stating that in the 75th year of Independence, the country is standing at crossroads, Yechury alleged that those who have the powers at present are trying to undermine Constitution to create a "Hindu Rashtra", which he claimed is the goal of the RSS.
On the veteran Communist leader's birth anniversary, the CPI(M) also started work on the construction of Jyoti Basu Centre for Social Studies and Research in New Town near Kolkata.
(With PTI inputs)
