2nd historic mistake?

It’s not as if the Left had always wanted to endorse the UPA presidential aspirant. In fact, several regional parties had come up with the name of Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee around whom a consensus could be built. But CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat cold-shouldered Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Union Minister T R Baalu, who had met him on behalf of DMK’s M Karunanidhi.

The overt reason was that the CPI(M) did not want to be part of the executive branch. The real reason, or at least that’s what a section of the red party believes, was Chatterjee’s increasing differences with members of the party establishment. To bolster their theory, they point out that the Marxists had fielded candidates in presidential elections earlier, with Lakshmi Sehgal contesting against A P J Abdul Kalam in 2002. “This was an occasion on which we could have won, but the party shied away,” says a CPM leader.