Thrissur, Oct 27 (Agencies) : When the mainstream Communist parties in the country are engaged in introspection of their past political lines, a senior CPI leader in Kerala on Monday said withdrawal of support to the UPA-I was a "strategic mistake" of the Left.

"We (the Left) withdrew support to the first UPA government at the Centre over the Indo-US (civil) nuclear deal. It involved a strategic mistake. We failed to convince the people of the reason for taking such a stand. There has been a sharp fall in the strength of the Left in Parliament in elections that followed," CPI state secretary Panniayan Raveendran said at a programme of the party's farmers wing here.

Raveendran recently criticised the CPI(M) for its decision to observe the 50th anniversary of the split in Indian Communist movement while ignoring the 75th anniversary of the party formation in Kerala.

CPI-M hit back by asserting that the split in fact had helped emergence of a working class revolutionary party by dissociating from the deviationist policies and authoritarian approach of the then chairman of the undivided party SA Dange.