Thursday, January 19 2006 16:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M) today (Jan 19, 2006) criticised the action by a group of Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) MLAs to join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form government in Karnataka and termed it as a 'betrayal' of their party's commitment to uphold a secular government in the state.

"The sheer opportunism of this move will cost them heavily as the people will not take kindly to such unscrupulous and unprincipled manoeuvres," CPI(M) Polit Bureau said in a statement.

It condemned the 'unscrupulous' tie-up between the BJP and the rebel MLAs.