With the country going to Lok Sabha polls later this year, the Communist Party of India-Marxist has asked its state units to immediately begin campaigning in the five states of the Hindi heartland where it would put up candidates.
While it has not publicly announced the constituencies where it would field candidates, CPI-M sources said the states where the party would contest at least one parliamentary seat were Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
The effort in these states would be to concentrate all the forces and activities in the constituencies identified and not to scatter them, they said.
Aiming to form a 'non-Congress, non-BJP' government at the Centre after the elections, the CPI-M leadership has
issued directions to its units and mass organisations in these states to immediately begin work in the identified
constituencies.
The party units in the strongholds of West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have already
started activities in the constituencies where it would contest, the sources said.
Most of the states have decided on the seats to be contested in the Lok Sabha elections, they said, adding that
the entire month of February would be devoted to the political campaign projecting the CPI-M's
views and policies.
In Andhra Pradesh, the CPI-M and CPI have tied up with the Telugu Desam Party and are working on the possibility of the Telengana Rashtra Samiti coming to an understanding with this combination.
In Tamil Nadu, the two parties have entered into an electoral understanding with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which, it has said, had opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal and has not gone with the BJP after the 2004 general elections, the sources said.
Both the Left parties have tied up with the Janata Dal-Secular in Karnataka and was in talks with other non-Congress secular parties to present an "effective electoral" combination before the people at the hustings in other states, they said.
The CPI-M has decided to launch a "vigorous" campaign to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to keep the "communal forces" out of power at the Centre.
At the same time, it would also focus on the "anti-people" economic policies of the Congress-led United Progressive Aalliance "harmful" consequences of its strategic alliance with the US.