Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, whose economic policies have been severely criticised by the Left parties in the past, has been invited by the CPI to deliver the second A B Bardhan memorial lecture here on Tuesday.
Communist Party of India general secretary S Sudhakar Reddy defended the party's decision to invite Singh, saying the coming together of secular-democratic forces was more important than differences over economic policy.
"The CPI, for quite sometime now, is propagating a board platform for Left-secular-democratic forces, intellectuals, civil society... and we feel that the former PM Manmohan Singh has been rightly invited for the lecture," Reddy said.
Activist-journalist P Sainath will also speak at the event. The first A B Bardhan memorial lecture was delivered by veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta last year.
The lecture has been instituted in the memory of veteran CPI leader A B Bardhan, who passed away in 2016.
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