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No truck with Congress, no way: Surjeet

''There is no question," he said in New Delhi, "The Congress is in poor shape. I sympathise with them, but they should first set their house in order."

Exuding confidence that the UF would come back to power, Surjeet said his party, the CPI-M, would retain its option of joining a possible government until after the election.

He reiterated that it is the BJP, and not Congress, which was the UF's number one enemy. The Congress was incapable of countering the saffron party's communalism.

The veteran contended that values in the Congress has eroded so much that he could see no difference between it and the BJP. The political thought of Congressmen and BJP members has become so similar, he claimed -- and both were 'unprincipled.'

Surjeet said the Congress had not learnt lessons from its mistakes of four decades. That was why it was out of power. It hoped once again of coming back on the basis of personalities such as Sonia Gandhi.

''They should think why they lost the confidence of the people, particularly the minorities,'' he said.

The CPI-M general secretary said the Congress made an attempt to share power with the UF by bringing in non-issues such as the Jain Commission report. When their manipulations failed, they pulled down the government.

Surjeet spoke of an all-round erosion in values in politics, pointing out the flocking of Congressmen to the BJP as example.

Peace and stability, Surjeet said, could only come from the kind of equality which the UF created during its brief tenure.

"Even the BJP cannot complain that its governments in the states were discriminated against," he said.

Surjeet said the BJP's pretensions of democratic values and secularism stood exposed in the eyes of the electorate. That was why senior BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee was talking about ushering in the Presidential system of government.

"They know they cannot come to power through democratic means," Surjeet said.

Maintaining that the BJP did not believe in the equality of language, he said its narrow-minded policies were ill-suited for India whose countrymen believed in unity in diversity. He referred to BJP leader L K Advani's reported statement that he was earlier planning to engineer the defection of 40 Congress MPs, saying that it exposes 'the BJP's hollowness.'

Surjeet underscored the UF government's achievements during its 18 month reign and took pride in its stand on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and its refusal to bow down to American pressure on missile and nuclear issues.

Asked about the ongoing squabbles in the UF about seat-sharing, Surjeet said this was a common occurrence in all parties.

Commenting on Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's reported statement that he would support the Congress candidature of either Sonia Gandhi or Priyanka if they decided to contest from Uttar Pradesh, the CPI-M stalwart said many of such statement were concocted by the media. However, he said the UF would support Mulayam Singh's actions in the state.

Tara Shankar Sahay, UNI

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