Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s overtures to the Left have hit the Karat wall.

Days after the Prime Minister’s statement that he hoped to find ways and means to work with the Left even though he disagreed with them on economic issues, CPI(M) top boss Prakash Karat on Thursday spelt it out clearly that both the sides were ideologically poles apart.

Karat’s arguments, peppered with sarcasm and ridicule, were also precisely on economic issues. Without mincing words, the hardline Marxist said Singh and his UPA Government were stuck to the ideological dogma of neo-liberal economic policies.

At a function here, he rejected the olive branch extended by the Prime Minister and took him head on for his comments that the UPA Government had strengthened banking and insurance systems and India was able to meet the global financial crisis because of these steps.

“The Prime Minister has made some important pronouncements when he was on a plane while returning from Japan. Our Prime Minister makes such important pronouncements on board planes,” he said in an unusually mocking manner.

Recounting his experience in engaging the Government over the last few years, he said the Left parties had spent hours together with the Prime Minister and Finance Minister arguing that the Government should not go for financial sector liberalisation.

“After spending hours together, they used to say that you have taken an ideological position. It is in fact they who are stuck to the ideological dogma of neo-liberal policies,” he said.

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