Left parties to 'appraise' UPA govt

The Left parties will do a 'performance appraisal' of the UPA government on the completion of two years in office, at a meeting at 7, Race Course Road on Tuesday.

Apart from all members of the UPA-Left Coordination Committee including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the meeting will be attended by many other senior ministers who will give a report on the performance of their respective departments in the past two years, according to Left leaders.

Coming as it does shortly after Financial Minister P Chidambaram's unequivocal rejection of the Left's demand to reintroduce long-term capital gains tax and review the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement with Mauritius in the wake of the stock market crash last week, stage is set for an acrimonious debate between the two sides on Tuesday.

"It is not exactly a UPA-Left Coordination Committee meeting because many ministers who are not members of it will also participate in it. You may call it a reporting session by the government," said RSP leader Abani Roy.

Although there is no formal agenda for the meeting as yet, Left leaders said that a host of issues could come up for discussion in course of the government's presentation on its achievements and implementation of the National Common Minimum Programme.

There are a host of issues on which the two sides have differences of opinion. The government is particularly anxious about the Left stridency on issues like oil price hike, Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2005, modernisation of airports through privatisation, labour and pension reforms, etc. Of late, the Left has been targeting the UPA regime for the pro-US tilt in its foreign policy.

The CPI(M) has expressed serious reservation about the Cabinet's decision to join the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline project, which, it believes, is being done under US pressure and at the expense of Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. It has also opposed the government's move to reduce the interest rate on the Employees' Provident Fund any further.

These are among a host of contentious issues that threaten to sour the relationship between the UPA and its Left allies, who have been accusing the government of violating the NCMP.

Nevertheless, the government cannot afford to sit over these issue to avoid any confrontation with the allies. Most of them need urgent attention. "It's the government that has to do the talking this time. There is not much scope for any comprehensive discussion, let alone some solution, on any issue in a two-hour long meeting," said Left leaders.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat has said that the CPI(M) and other Left parties will discuss in the coming days how to take forward the Left platform at the national level.

After making an overall assessment of the political situation, the party and the Left would have to chalk out a course of action whereby they could more effectively intervene in the national situation, he said in an article in the latest issue of People's Democracy, the CPI(M) mouthpiece.