India now junior partner to US strategic designs: CPI-M

New Delhi, June 9  The CPI-M on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of making India "a strategic junior partner of the US global strategic designs".

Commenting on the Indo-US Joint Statement issued during Modi's visit to the US, the Communist Party of India-Marxist said it amounted to abandoning New Delhi's independent position on foreign policy.

"The 50-paragraph Joint Statement ... is a declaration that cements India's role as a strategic junior partner of US global strategic designs," it said in a statement.

"The agreement covers almost the entire scope of bilateral relations as well as a global partnership, declaring that India has abandoned its established independent foreign policy and has firmly tied itself to the apron strings of US global strategic designs."

It said the agreement commits India to provide logistic facilities such as re-fuelling of the US Air Force on its adventures of military intervention in any part of the world. 

"Given the US/NATO military interventions in West Asia, where there is a large NRI presence, this will have serious consequences for Indian foreign policy as well as Indians working in these countries," the CPI-M warned.

"This abandons both our independent foreign policy and our bilateral interests with the friendly countries in West Asia and the Gulf."

The CPI-M said the agreement also made it clear that India's interests in the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean region had now been equated with the US interests and the US strategic objective of "containment of China". 

"The Modi government has clearly abandoned India's longstanding policy of developing good neighbourly relations and also the 'Look East Policy'. 

"The government has to answer against whom is India becoming a priority partner of the US in the region.

"In this Joint Statement, the US has accorded India the status of its major defence partner. What are the obligations of this partnership?

These are all major issues which are being decided without any debate in the Indian Parliament by the BJP-led Modi government," it said.