Left failed to turn Indo-US nuke deal into poll issue: Yechury

New Delhi, Seven years after it withdrew support from the Manmohan Singh government over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the CPI (M) on Monday admitted to the party’s failure to rally people’s support over the issue during elections. The party also admitted that the withdrawal was ill timed.
The party’s new General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the Left parties should have linked the withdrawal of support to the government with what he termed as ‘people’s issues’ such as price rise. Yechury had previously said the Left should not have withdrawn support to the government on the issue of nuclear deal but later clarified that withdrawing support was the parties’ only option.
“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 the UPA abandoning the ‘aam aadmi’ perspective,” Yechury said.
“And it was also the timing (of withdrawal), for which we also criticised ourselves. But the issue of (opposing) the nuclear deal, we have no regrets and we think is correct.”
Going ahead with the nuclear deal indicated that the UPA wanted to jettison the Left, he said.
“The nuclear deal was not part of the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme, he says but there was tremendous pressure on India to be a subordinate ally of the US strategic interests in the world. We have been vindicated on this,” he said.
Yechury was replying to a question on the decline of the Left forces, including CPI (M), after the 2009 elections and whether snapping ties with UPA on the Indo-US nuclear deal was a mistake.
While the Left got 64 seats in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, its numbers fell to 24 in 2009 and a negligible 10 in the 2014 polls.
In 2009, the CPI (M) Central Committee had said in its poll review: “The decision to withdraw support to the (UPA-I) government when it decided to go ahead to operationalise the nuclear deal was correct. It was based on our understanding that the Party cannot support a government that is entering into a comprehensive strategic tie-up with US imperialism in which the nuclear deal was … ‘the cementing factor’. However, we could not mobilise people on the nuclear issue and rally them during the election.”
After several warnings and protestsagainst signing the nuclear agreement against the Indo-US N-Deal in July 2008, the Left withdrew support from the UPA-I, forcing the government of the day to undergo a floor test in the Parliament.