While it castigates the “Manmohan Singh government” for undermining India’s independent foreign policy by forging a strategic alliance with the United States through the nuclear deal, the CPM manifesto, released today, calls for a “de-nuclearised environment in South Asia” — a policy that would certainly gladden many hearts in Washington.

“Pursuing universal nuclear disarmament through the UN; providing parliamentary sanction for moratorium on testing; striving for a de-nuclearised environment in South Asia”, reads the manifesto under the sub-head “security concerns.”

Incidentally, the US call for de-nuclearisation in South Asia picked up after India conducted the 1998 Pokhran tests. After Pokhran, the US called for cap and rollback of the nuclear programme.

While it refers to the Government as “UPA” or “Congress-led government,” it’s on foreign policy that the CPM lets its feelings for the Prime Minister be known — mentioning him by name: “The Manmohan Singh government shamelessly lined up with the US to vote against Iran in the IAEA in order to get the nuclear deal through US Congress.”

Demanding the abrogation of the Defence Framework Agreement with the US, the manifesto says that the Indo-US nuclear deal would be “reviewed and reworked”. Interestingly, it makes no mention of the nuclear deal between India and Russia or France. It calls for improving relations with China and expanding trilateral cooperation between Russia, India and China and completing the Indo-Iran gas pipeline.

The high point of the 31-page manifesto is that it’s an all-out attack against the UPA — in sharp contrast with the 2004 manifesto that kept the BJP as a target. On virtually every page, the manifesto criticises the “Congress-led government,” devoting less than a page to the BJP calling it a “regressive force”, indicating clearly that in 2009, defeating the Congress is top on the Left’s agenda.

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