Left to offer ‘critical support’ to AAP in Delhi Assembly polls

Left parties, marginal players in the Delhi Assembly elections, will provide “critical support” to the AAP in 56 seats to keep the BJP out of power.

Seven Left parties are contesting in 14 Assembly meets as an alliance for the first time.

CPI(M) state secretary KM Tiwari said in a statement here the BJP and the Congress are responsible for the problems confronting the people of Delhi at present.

“Their rule has been marked with a never-ending rise in prices of food stuffs, large-scale unemployment, dismal state of housing, water, electricity, education, health and other civic facilities, violence on women, attacks on the livelihood of workers as well as consistent marginalisation of urban poor and toiling masses,” he said.

Though the AAP garnered support in the 2013 Assembly election citing the problems of the working class, when elected to power, it was unwilling to enunciate any alternate policy framework to solve the basic problems of the people, Tiwari said.

“In this backdrop, the CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML) Liberation, SUCI (C), Forward Bloc, RSP and Socialist Party (India) have come to a seat-sharing arrangement, and will be extending support to each other on 14 seats,” he said.

When asked what will be the Left’s position in the rest of the 56 seats, senior CPI(M) leader Pushpendra Grewal said his party will “critically support” the AAP. “We will not campaign for them. But we will ask our cadre and sympathisers to vote for AAP in those 56 seats,” he said.