Monday, May 9 2005 09:20 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) yesterday (May 8, 2005) ridiculed the new anti-Left Opposition alliance comprising Congress and Trinamool Congress's (TC) breakaway faction saying that it was formed by "power seekers" and would not last long.

"It is an opportunistic alliance formed by power seekers. It has no programs. And it will not last long," the State secretary of CPM Anil Biswas said launching the Left Front's election campaign for the city civic polls next month.

He said that it seemed that new Opposition alliance was formed taking a cue from the Left Front experiment in West Bengal. "But there is a qualitative difference between the two. While the Left Front was formed through mass struggles, the new Opposition alliance was set up in haste.

In an obvious dig at senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee's statement that alliance formed by Congress and other "like-minded" parties would seek to bring back democracy in West Bengal by ending Left Front "misrule", Biswas asked, "Is there democracy within their own party?"

Mukherjee had earlier said the alliance named 'United Democratic Alliance' would keep away from communal forces.

The launch of the alliance came days after TC suffered a split on April 26 barely two months before the Kolkata Municipal Corporation election when TC supremo Mamata Banerjee refused to part with National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and join hands with the Congress.

Besides the Congress and the breakaway TC faction and a few other parties with little political presence in West Bengal including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Samajwadi Party (SP) and PDS, a breakaway CPM group, were part of the alliance.