Coimbatore, Apr 3: The six-day 19th Congress of the CPI(M) concluded here on Thursday with a call from newly-elected general secretary Prakash Karat to launch a "determined battle" against the communal forces and to prevent India from becoming a "junior partner of US imperialism". The major Left party also decided to "immediately" start work on forging a 'third alternative' distinct from the BJP and the Congress.

"This Party Congress has reiterated that the fight against the communal forces led by the BJP-RSS will be conducted determinedly. We are ready to take up the challenge," Karat said at the concluding open session of the Congress soon after he was re-elected for the second three-year term. A day after the attack on its Pune party office, the CPI(M) leader said: "you have seen how RSS is targeting our party, attacking our offices and killing our supporters.

This is because the CPI(M) is the most consistent opponent of all forms of communalism. Our entire party will go into battle against the communal forces." Announcing that the party had charted out its political line for the next three years, Karat said: "we affirmed that our struggle against neo-liberal economic policies and for alternative policies will be carried forward with renewed vigour."

On foreign policy issues, he said: "we would like to tell the ruling classes or whoever is in power at the Centre that the people of this country will not allow India to become a junior partner of US imperialism." Karat said the CPI(M) Congress had "commended the party leadership for being in the forefront of the struggle against India being converted into a strategic ally of the US.

" Asserting that "there has to be an alternative to the present bourgeois-landlord political system", he said the CPI(M) would "have to gather forces and build an all-India movement for a Left and democratic alternative." In the meantime, "we have to immediately create a third alternative which can offer the people a policy platform distinct from the two mainstream political forces led by Congress and BJP," he said. He said the party Congress had adopted a document which provides the framework for three Left-led state governments about how they should work and fulfill the commitments made to the people of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.

"A unique feature of these governments is that they have been voted back even after being in power for so many years. The people not only in these three states but also those all over the country know that the bourgeois-landlord system cannot provide them with prosperity, justice and a society free from exploitation," he said. Karat said the Congress also discussed how the party would further mobilise the working class, the peasantry and other downtrodden sections of the society. "The message of this Party Congress to the people and the democratic and secular forces is that we have to build a united and a secular India and a society free from exploitation and social oppression," the CPI(M) leader said.