Left Launches Campaign Against UPA

Left Launces Nation-wide Campaign Against Manmohan-led UPA Government from Today

New Delhi, July 14, 2008: Launching a nationwide campaign against the UPA government clubbing the nuclear deal and price rise, the Left parties on Monday accused the ruling combine of “failing” to address the problems of the ‘aam aadmi’ due to its “obsession” with the agreement.

The Left parties said they could not agree to the country becoming a “junior partner” to the US and withdrew support to the government as it moved ahead with the deal when the country was faced with price rise and inflation.

Attacking the government for moving ahead with the deal when in “minority”, CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat took a potshot at the ruling party, saying ‘Congress ka Haath, America ke Saath’.

Karat said the Left will work to defeat the government on the trust vote and expects that more parties will join them in the struggle against the deal.

“The popularity of President George W Bush in US is 20-25 per cent. He is the President of a minority. We have a Prime Minister who is heading a minority government. A minority President and minority Prime Minister are trying to hook this country to US hegemony,” the senior CPI(M) leader said.

Claiming that the government and Congress want to fulfil their promise to Bush, he said, “it is their primary aim and not tackling inflation or price rise…The deal and price rise were the issues on which we withdrew support.“

“We were tolerating them (UPA) because we did not want BJP and other communal forces to come to power,” he said.

In an apparent reference to Congress tie-up with Samajwadi Party, Karat said there is a party which is now supporting the government, but shared the dais with the Left sometime ago in opposing the deal.

Attacking the UPA for its “refusal” to take appropriate steps to tackle inflation and price rise, Karat claimed that the nuclear deal would be used by the US to “pressurise” the country to open up for MNCs, which would have a “detrimental” effect on India.

“This government took a shameful step when it voted against Iran (in the IAEA),” Karat said noting that the country would have to surrender its foreign policy and toe American line on international affairs if it went ahead with the deal.

On voting against the government along with BJP during the trust vote, Karat said that Congress has no right to point fingers at the Left saying it [congress] had “conspired” to topple secular governments of V P Singh, H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral in the 1990s and voted along with the saffron party.

CPI general secretary A B Bardhan in his address, said, “We have never said that we are voting with BJP. We have talked to other parties, not to BJP. If the other parties want to talk to us, we cannot push them out. We are voting against the UPA because of its policies.”

“If the BJP wants to vote against (UPA), they have a right to do so. Those who voted along with BJP are now teaching us. We will continue to fight communal forces,” he said.

He wondered whether India was acting under “US pressure” not to go ahead with the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. The campaign has been launched to explain to the people the reasons for withdrawing support besides “explaining the UPA’s pro-American and anti-people policies which are resulting in price rise and other problems”.

In the course of the campaign, the Left will also place before the people alternatives to meet energy requirements for development and for putting an end to economic policies which are “harmful to farmers, rural poor, workers and other sections”.

Plans are afoot to field top leaders, who will criss-cross the country, to attend public meetings and rallies organised in major towns in all states.

Meetings will be organised at all major centres, as well as in towns and villages. Pamphlets and handbills will be published.

The campaign plank will be anti-imperialism and defence of the country’s sovereignty, anti-communalism, secular domestic polity and protection and improvement of common people’s livelihood against attacks of big business, a senior Left leader said.

Why and How the Minority Govt. step up Operations with Nuke Deal?

July 10 (New Delhi) – India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to meet President Pratibha Patil today to discuss a likely confidence vote after communist allies withdrew support to the government over a nuclear accord with the U.S.

The meeting comes as Singh authorized the International Atomic Energy Agency to circulate to its members plans under which inspectors would get access to the country’s atomic power facilities. The meeting with Patil is scheduled for 7:15 p.m., presidential spokeswoman Archana Datta said.

The safeguards agreement is a key condition to putting into effect the nuclear cooperation accord with the U.S., giving India access to civilian atomic technologies.

“The only item left for discussion today between the president and the prime minister is when to call the house for a trust vote,” said N. Bhaskara Rao, chairman, Centre for Media Studies, an independent policy group in New Delhi. “The government has gone to the IAEA in a hurry to preempt any direction from the President on this issue before today’s meeting takes place.”

India plans to separate its civilian and military nuclear plants as part of the safeguards agreement, the government said in the draft of the accord issued in New Delhi today.

The country plans to develop strategic reserves of nuclear fuel, according to the draft that the government has submitted to the international nuclear regulator. Safeguarded items won’t be put to military use, India said.

Withdrawing Support

The four communist parties, opposed to the nuclear deal, yesterday met Patil to inform her about their decision to withdraw support to Singh’s government. They asked Patil to advise Singh to prove that his government still enjoys a majority in parliament, the president’s office said in an e-mailed statement.

Singh said he’ll seek approval from the IAEA after he convinced the regional Samajwadi Party to back his ruling coalition. The Samajwadi Party, based in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, officially notified President Pratibha Patil yesterday that it will back the government.

“Keeping in mind these political developments, the president has requested the prime minister to meet her to have his views on these developments,” the president’s office said in a statement yesterday.

Singh will prove that his government has a majority before approaching the IAEA over the nuclear accord, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on July 8.

Communist Stand

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said the draft agreement had been sent to the IAEA after the government had become a minority because of the withdrawal of support. The party will seek to make it impossible for the government to go ahead with the nuclear agreement, Prakash Karat, leader of the CPI(M), said in a televised broadcast in New Delhi today.

The nuclear regulator sent its 35-member board of governors a draft of the “Agreement with the Government of India for the Application of Safeguards to Civilian Nuclear Facilities,” the Vienna-based organization said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

The regulator will hold an extraordinary meeting to vote on its agreement with India.

“The chairman of the board is consulting with board members to agree on a date for a board meeting when the agreement would be considered, the agency said.

Singh and President George W. Bush reaffirmed their commitment to the nuclear treaty yesterday at a meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations summit in Toyako, Japan.

“The fate of the nuclear deal depends upon developments at the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” Rao said.

Safeguards for the country’s nuclear power generation plants will be applied in phases. IAEA safeguards won’t hamper the country’s economic development, the government said.

India needs to complete the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and reach an accord with the Nuclear Suppliers Group before the U.S. can take the treaty to Congress for approval.

What Dr Gopalakrishnan Says…

“Most IAEA safeguard work is spying activity”

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“Scientific community will fight to the last”
Kakodkar forced to speak out after “arm-twisting” by PMO, MEA
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NEW DELHI, 24/02/2006: Most of the safeguard work done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is “spying activity” on behalf of the United States, former Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) Chairman A. Gopalakrishnan said on Thursday.

Insider’s view

Addressing a seminar organised by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) at the India International Centre, Dr. Gopalakrishnan said that he had had a view of these activities from inside the system. “I have been inside the system. All the information [collected by the IAEA] is passed on to the Americans,” he said.

Defends DAE stand

Defending the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) position that India’s fast-breeder programme should not be placed in the civilian list of nuclear facilities as demanded by the United States, Dr. Gopalakrishnan said, “The scientific community will fight to the last … ”

Asked why the DAE chief, Anil Kakodkar, has chosen to go public on the need to keep the fast-breeder programme outside the proposed safeguards, Dr. Gopalakrishnan said Dr. Kakodkar was forced to speak out due to “arm-twisting” by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of External Affairs. “He [Dr. Kakodkar] had to speak out on behalf of 20,000 engineers,” the former AERB chief stated.

Claiming to speak on behalf of the DAE, Dr. Gopalakrishnan denied reports in a section of the press that the fast-breeder programme would be exempted from safeguards for a few years only. In a detailed presentation, he said the fast-breeder programme, which had been developed indigenously, was put in place in the face of all kinds of sanctions imposed by the U.S.

According to him, the breeder programme was to be kept out indefinitely and not till 2010 “or anything like that.” These indigenously developed reactors were essential for India’s strategic weapons’ programme, he added.

Left withdraws support::SP backs UPA govt

Left Party Leaders Prakash Karat, Debabrata Biswas announce the withdrawal of support to the UPA Government in New Delhi.

New Delhi (PTI): The Left parties on Tuesday announced withdrawal of their support to the UPA government which appeared unfazed and declared that it will seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha during a short session this month after which it will move to operationalise the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Ending their four-and-a-half year relationship with the Congress over the nuclear deal, the four Left parties with a total of 59 MPs will formally announce their withdrawal at 12 noon on wednesday when they will meet President Pratibha Patil.

The Left’s decision, though expected, set off a flurry of political maneouverings with the government, which have 230 members in the Lok Sabha without the Left, asserting that it had the required majority of at least 272, the gap being filled by 38 Samajwadi Party MPs plus support from smaller parties such as PDP.

A confident Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose announcement that India will very soon approach the IAEA for the safeguards agreement triggered Left’s break up, said the Left decision will “not affect the stability of the government”.

Singh, who is in the Japanese island of Sappro, said “we will go to the IAEA as soon as possible”.

Emerging from a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said “we will seek the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha as soon as we receive the formal communication from Rashtrapati Bhavan”.

Mukherjee said it would be a “short session” to dispose of the trust vote. Congress sources indicated that after the President’s nod, the session could be held around the third week of this month.

This will enable the Government to go to the IAEA, which has a meeting of the board of governors on July 28, for firming up the India-specific safeguards agreement with the backing of Parliament.

“Surely, we would like to seek the approval of the Board of Governors of IAEA the moment we receive the vote of confidence. That is why we would like to expedite the entire process,” he told reporters.

“Taste of the pudding is in eating,” Mukherjee said when asked whether the government had the requisite numbers to win the vote of confidence.

Senior cabinet minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar expressed confidence about winning the trust vote “any time the President desires.”

Though the SP is promising that all its MPs will back the government on the deal, first signs of revolt have surfaced with party MP from Mohanlalganj in UP, Jai Prakash claiming that over a dozen legislators would defy the party whip and vote against the government.

The Congress is keeping its fingers crossed and hoping for the backing of parties led by Ajit Singh and H D Deve Gowda to sail through the trust vote.

SP promises to vote for govt.

An earlier report said the Samajwadi Party, whose 39 MPs will have a crucial role in determining survival of the government, on Tuesday said it would vote for the government on the Indo-US nuclear deal to “save” it.

The SP announced the decision after its Parliamentary Party meeting held here to discuss its stand over the nuclear deal amid reports that some of its Muslim MPs were opposed to the atomic agreement.

“We will issue a three-line whip asking all MPs who have been elected on the Samajwadi Party symbol to vote in support of the nuclear deal and to save the UPA government,” SP General Secretary Amar Singh told reporters after the meeting.

SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav rubbished reports that Muslim MPs of the party were opposed to the nuclear deal. He later paraded them before a media contingent to prove that they were with the party on the issue.

“The nuclear deal has been welcomed by Muslims across the state including in Deoband, Saharanpur, Varanasi, Kanpur and Bareilly,” Yadav said.

At least 10 MPs did not attend the meeting. Among them two stayed away for “personal reasons”, three are suspended MPs, two are abroad, one in jail while another is in hospital.

Yadav termed as “figment of imagination” suggestions that the SP was in the race for the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker in case incumbent Somnath Chatterjee resigns.

He also expressed hope that the Left parties will not side with the “communal forces” in Parliament when the issue of the nuclear deal comes up for discussion.

“The Indo-US nuclear deal has the backing of scientists, intellectuals and experts,” Yadav said, pointing out that the party leadership had consulted former President APJ Abdul Kalam in this regard.

Yadav made it clear that the SP will not join the UPA government. “The question does not arise,” he shot back when asked whether his party was joining the government.

He expressed hope that the Congress would make efforts to pacify Left parties, which had decided to withdraw support from the UPA government earlier in the day.

“It is the responsibility of the Congress to clear the doubts of Left parties on the nuclear deal,” Yadav said.

He said the SP was not in favour of any party leaving the ruling coalition.

“We hope that Left parties would not join communal forces and will not do anything against the government,” Yadav said.

The SP chief said 39 MPs in Lok Sabha had won the elections on the party’s symbol and claimed that “many more” are with the party.

The Parliamentary Party meeting of the SP also passed a resolution expressing complete faith in all the decisions taken by the party leadership related to nuclear deal.

“The Parliamentary Party not only decided to support the deal, but also welcomed it unanimously,” Yadav said.

During the meeting, the party leaders discussed the current political scenario and the leadership also clarified the MPs’ doubts on the deal.

“The support for the nuclear deal has also come from the six centres of Islamic learning in the state, including in Deoband and Bareli,” said Amar Singh, while reading out the resolution issued by the SP Parliamentary Party.

Left letter to Pranab – full text

Left statement on IAEA text