Monday, September 5 2005 16:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The Communist Party of India (CPI), which is keen on forming a third front for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections with Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), CPI(ML) and Samajwadi Party, has convened an 'emergency meeting' of its National Executive later this month to finalise its strategy.

The meeting, to be held on September 17 and 18, would discuss and finalise electoral tactics to be adopted in the forthcoming polls, party sources said in New Delhi today (Sept 5, 2005).

The party has criticised the Congress for 'handing over' Jharkhand to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and was 'doing a similar thing' in Bihar by splitting secular votes.

Asserting that it would contest with Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP, CPI (ML) and Samajwadi Party and not with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), party General Secretary A B Bardhan has said the CPI had tried to align with Lalu Prasad's party earlier 'but the way RJD had dealt with its partners had not always been fair'.

Acknowledging that RJD was a secular party, he said, "There seems to be a lot of difficulty about the CPI not going with the RJD. We had tried a number of times, but it did not seem worthwhile going on talking to them".

The CPI (M) and the CPI have been on different wavelengths on the issue of alliances for coming Bihar polls with the Marxists rooting for a secular formation around RJD and Congress.

The CPI (M) Central Committee, at its three-day meeting, which concluded yesterday, felt RJD and Congress were the major political forces, which should form the basis for any secular alliance to defeat the BJP-led NDA.