Papering over fissures on the women’s reservation Bill, the Third Front partners today managed to buy temporary truce on price rise. The front will move a token cut motion on the finance Bill against the hike in prices of petroleum products and another proposal against the fertiliser price hike. It has also called for an All-India strike on April 27, (before the finance Bill is moved in the Lok Sabha).
At least 13 parties of the latest “Third Front” have planned to move this cut motion. The cut motion against the petro-price hike is going to have little impact on the health of the government and the government is expected to safely pass its finance Bill as these parties have just 88 MPs in the Lok Sabha. The ‘Third Front’ partners are in no mood to topple the second Manmohan Singh government so soon. Contented with their efforts to showcase their protest, these parties will not approach the BJP or any other National Democratic Alliance parties for support. “We have decided what we are going to do. We don’t know what the BJP or other NDA parties will do,” CPI leader A B Bardhan told reporters after the meeting.
CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury told Business Standard that there was no plan to seek the BJP’s support even as the saffron party had planned its own protest programmes on this issue.
But the rift between the ‘Third Front’ partners on the Women’s Bill surfaced again in today’s meeting. According to sources, RJD’s Lalu Prasad and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav raked up the topic even while others tried hard to keep the focus on price rise. The Yadav chieftains argued that they were supporting the Left and other parties over the issue of price rise but what happened if the government brought the women’s reservation Bill before the finance Bill?
Prasad even attacked Yechury and told him, “Surjeet (former CPI(M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet) had agreed to keep the women’s quota at 25 per cent. Why are you supporting 33 per cent quota?”
The Left leaders, including CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat assured the agitating Yadavs that if the government pushed the Bill soon, it would resist the government’s pressure. “Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee recently held an all-party meeting and told us that the government would hold another meeting with all parties on this issue. We will not allow the government to bring the Bill without any discussion with all parties.”
Finally, the ‘Third Front’ partners decided that if the government called another meeting on the women’s reservation Bill, they would also convene another ‘Third Front’ meeting to discuss the issue!
As Yadav and Prasad didn’t look convinced and continued to complain against other partners, Forward Bloc’s Debabrat Biswas intervened and said, “We will create so much noise over the price rise issue that the government will not be able to bring the women’s reservation Bill.”