Admitting that the ``Communists are too small to fight the communal forces'' and that the Left needed ``more allies'', Gupta, in a fervent clarion call to the comrades to gear up against the communal forces, said the Congress would take a decision on ``who should be on our side''.

In an obvious barrage against the BJP, he said that the State power for the first time had ``gone into the hands of the fascist forces out to divide the country, destroy India's culture and tradition''. Gupta said more sacrifices are needed if the fascist forces are to be defeated like in many other countries.

CPI general secretary A B Bardhan said the BJP-led coalition, which was shaky and unstable and beset with contradictions hadto be removed from power and a secular-democratic alternative had to take its place. ``The decline of the Congress during the last decade due to people's dissatisfaction and disillusionment with its policies of liberalisation and its other sins of commission and omission has been cynically exploited by the BJP by taking recourse to communal and demagogic propaganda''.

Calling for a serious discussion by the party on the situation arising from the nuclear tests, the `mess-up' of traditional foreign policy of peace, friendship and good neighbourly relations, economic decline and skyrocketing prices, he said movements against nuclear weaponisation, price rise and BJP's economic policies should be intensified. Left unity had to be based on sharing a commonality of views on national political economic and social issues, Bardhan said.

CPM general secretary H S Surjeet said a big responsibility rested on the shoulders of CPI and CPM to fight the bourgeois-feudal ideology. ``The Left parties have to concretelyapply the science of Marxism-Leninism to work out a concrete tactical line in order to rally the masses round this''.

Stressing the need to strengthen Left unity as also the unity of Left and democratic forces, he said this could be achieved by unleashing mass struggles and mass movements to oppose the ruling class policies and the Right-ward shift that had occurred.

Bardhan asks state govts not to support BJP

Speaking at the CPI National Congress which began in the city, Bardhan acknowledged that in a federal set up, State governments had to keep working relations with the government at the Centre, and avoid confrontation in a spirit of healthy Centre-State relations.

The BJP-led coalition actually denies true federalism. It is itching to use Article 356 to dismiss certain State governments run by other parties. If it has not done so as yet it is not because of any goodwill on its part, but because of general opposition and its perceived inability to get such a step ratified throughParliament, Bardhan said.