Mumbai: Welcoming Congress president Sonia Gandhi's call for a compact secular alliance, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ramvilas Paswan today (Dec 29, 2003) said the results of the just-concluded Assembly elections would have been different if this call was given earlier.

"The Congress move to form an alliance of secular forces to fight the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) Government is a welcome step," Paswan told reporters.

He said instead of forming a Third Front, it was necessary that there should be only single front to take on the communal parties.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win in the three Congress-ruled States was due to division of secular votes, Paswan said, adding, "If the Congress had formed alliance with secular parties for the polls then the result would have been different."

Other factors that contributed to the BJP win were the State issues being given importance in the election campaign, which would not work in the next elections for the BJP, he added.

Paswan said if the Congress was to take on the BJP then it had to rake up the issue of unemployment on which the ruling party had been defensive so far.

Similarly, the new economic policy of the NDA Government in which profit-making PSUs (public sector undertakings) were sold while those in loss were being closed, should be targetted by the Congress, he said.

The former Union Minister further said the Opposition parties should ask the Centre to implement reservations in private sector to solve the unemployment problem due to its privatisation policy.