Biman Bose, CPM Politburo member and Left Front chairman in West Bengal, has said that the Left can consider supporting a BJP-led coalition if that party sheds what he called its “communal agenda”.

In surprising remarks made in London on Thursday, he also said the Left may have made “a mistake” by not withdrawing its support from the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government earlier and accused the Congress of trying to “bail out” the US Republican Party through the nuclear deal ahead of US elections.

Bose made his startling remarks while briefing a select group of British diplomats, bankers, and government and Commonwealth officials over dinner in London Thursday night.

IANS was the only Indian media group invited to this meeting.

The dinner was hosted by industrialist Shishir Bajoria of the Kolkata-based Bajoria Group. Bose, who is general secretary of the West Bengal CPM, was asked pointedly if there were any circumstances under which the Left would support a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition in New Delhi.

“The Left never subscribed to the communal politics of the BJP. That does not mean the BJP all the time did only mischief. It does not mean that. But the BJP could not leave its communal agenda,” Bose said.

“If it happens that the BJP is opposing communal politics, then the real stand will be clarified. Whether the BJP is more dangerous than the Congress or the other way round depends on some distinct political twists and turns, and parties’ principles can be judged only in those twists and turns, not in normal conditions...So wait for some days — or some years — to see those twists and turns. If the BJP moves with the same politics with which they are moving today, the question (of supporting the BJP) doesn’t arise at all,” he added.

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