Prakash Karat denies saying CPI-M prospects bleak in Bengal

CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat has denied having told eminent British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm that his party is expected to do "very badly" in West Bengal in the assembly elections next year.

He was reacting to media reports regarding an interview of Hobsbawm, carried in the January-February issue of prestigious Leftist journal 'New Left Review', published from London.

In the interview, Hobsbawm has claimed that Karat had told him that the CPI-M was "beleaguered and besieged" in West Bengal, where it has been in power for three decades and was expected to do badly in the assembly polls due next year.

In a statement in CPI(M) daily 'Deshabhimani' today, Karat said though he had spoken to Hobsbawm over telephone a few months ago, the historian's comments on CPI(M)'s electoral
prospects were his (Hobsbawm’s) views and had nothing to do
with the party.

"I had a telephonic talk with Hobsbawm some months back. Amid the conversation, he had sought to know about the performance of the Indian Left," he said. 

"I explained to him about the attacks on CPI-M in West Bengal after the parliamentary polls. I also told him about the violence unleashed on party workers by Trinamool Congress and Maoists efforts to resist and overcome the difficult situation," Karat said

A widely respected Marxist historiographer, Hobsbawm had made the comments on the Indian Left and its electoral prospects in West Bengal in the interview headlined "World distempers".