The UPA government will have to take a political call latest by the end of October on over-ruling the Left?s arguments on the nuclear deal and push ahead with the process of operationalising the 123 agreement.
The issue is understood to have come up at a one-on-one meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday, although government sources conceded that options before the UPA leadership were known and limited.
The two leaders are believed to have gone into the relevance of the exercise of holding lengthy discussions with the Left in the committee headed by external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee. A senior leader wondered that when the decision would have to be a political one, what was the point of engaging with the Left through the committee.
In this context, the assessment now is that the UPA would have to take a clear stand within weeks, possibly after the third meeting of the committee scheduled to meet on October 5. In fact, government managers are now waiting for the CPI(M) politburo and central committee meeting this month end to see if the Left will make some nuanced changes in its stand and give some breathing space to the government. This seems unlikely though, considering that the Left leaders, in the last meeting of the committee, even threatened to vote along with the BJP in opposing the nuclear deal if the government attempted to push it through Parliament without their support.
Sources also pointed out that the interest displayed in the committee was limited to a few of the members. Senior leaders like Sharad Pawar and Lalu Yadav are yet to speak with clarity in the two meetings that have been held. From the Left, too, it is only Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury who have been doing most of the talking. To give the Left leaders credit though, they have come fully prepared with detailed documents, prepared meticulously by Left leaning experts.
Pressure on the government to swing the deal has increased with the US on Friday signaling that it wanted to seal the agreement by this year-end. The view was made known by Richard JK Stratford, director at the office of the nuclear energy affairs in the US state department, while briefing the 45-member nuclear suppliers group (NSG). The US had convened the meeting of the NSG on the sidelines of the IAEA meet in Vienna.
In the meeting, held at the Prime Minister’s residence, issues relating to reshuffle, both in the Congress as well as government, too might have been taken up, the sources said.