Friday, September 9 2005 14:43 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) Marxist (M) leader Jyoti Basu today (Sept 9, 2005) said that there should not be any split in the left secular votes even as the CPI favored a third front with Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), Samajwadi party and CPI-ML for the ensuing assembly election in Bihar.

''CPI is against going with Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD). We are trying to bring them together. There should not be any split in the left secular votes'', Basu told reporters at the CPI-M office in Kolkata.

CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan had earlier stated that his party would contest the Bihar poll with Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP, CPI(ML) and Samajwadi Party and not with the RJD.

Acknowledging that RJD was a secular party, he said that there seemed 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".