Bhel forces Left rethink

Front to take up year's first divestment plan.

The Bhel disinvestment is set to have some repercussion in the ruling coalition.

The Left parties will soon meet to discuss their opposition to Thursday's Cabinet decision and similar situations where "the government does what it wants" despite the protests of its alliance partners, according to sources in the Communist Party of India.

"The Left will work on strategies to make their discussions with the government more concrete so that informal talk at breakfast meetings does not result in formal decisions at the Cabinet level," a party source said.

Leaders of other Left parties indicated that as part of this strategy, the Left Front might insist on structured discussions with the government, rather than informal briefings at the prime minister's residence.

"It would be better if we had meetings with a settled agenda from now onwards," Revolutionary Socialist Party leader Abani Roy said. He said the Left had already insisted that the government meet the Left Front rather than individual party leaders on a "piecemeal" basis.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram had started this trend while discussing foreign direct investment in the telecom sector and other issues with the Left a few months ago. He met leaders from the CPI (Marxist) for lunch and the CPI for dinner on that occasion.

The practice was continued during the discussions over the Patents Bill. Meetings between the government and the CPI(M) had caused considerable heartburn to the other constituents of the Left Front.

D Raja of the CPI said it was necessary to prevent the UPA from variously interpreting the National Common Minimum Programme. This would be discussed at the next meeting between the government and the Left, he said.

The government has gone ahead with several policy decisions despite the Left's opposition. Prominent among these are raising the FDI caps in the telecom and the banking sector.

In both cases, the government held discussions with the Left. However, the Bhel disinvestment is the first major instance where the government has claimed to have "consulted" the Left only to have it denied by Left party leaders.