NEW DELHI, June 21: India's main communist party, the CPI(M), said on Thursday that the US intelligence agency CIA played a major role in toppling the world's first elected communist government in Kerala way back in the 1950s.

“I have been supplied with documents that proves that the E M S Namboodiripad-led Left government in Kerala in the 50s was dismissed with the active help of the CIA,” PTI quoted CPI-M General-Secretary Prakash Karat as saying.

Addressing a function to commemorate 30 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal, Mr Karat said: “Article 356 (of the Constitution) was used against the first Left front government in the world at the behest of foreign powers. Money was pumped in for the purpose.”

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala is commemorating the 50th year of the election victory this year. In 1957, the LDF government came to power with a thumping majority in the first election after the state's formation.

Mr Karat also criticised the opposition parties for targeting the Left-led government in West Bengal. “There have been repeated demands by some people to use Article 356 against the West Bengal government too. The BJP tried it after the Nandigram controversy and they failed miserably,” he said.

His comments came amid assertions by former US Ambassador to India Ellsworth Bunker in his biography that the CIA had performed a clandestine operation to topple the Namboodiripad government.

Mr Bunker had claimed that the plan was to fund an anti-state government agitation in Kerala and create a situation so that the central government was forced to intervene.