Left, BJP play ducks and drakes over Patents Bill

With the Left today claiming that 10 of its amendments to the Patents Bill had been accepted by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, including the controversial pre-grant opposition clauses, it was left to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to oppose the Bill it had itself drafted in 2003.

In a move that smacked of pure politics, the BJP today sent away Leader of the Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee, who had a meeting with BJP chief LK Advani, with the advice that the amendment should be referred to a standing committee or a select committee because since the BJP had drafted it, many changes had taken place on the international economic scene and those needed to be discussed.

But the government conveyed to the BJP that it would not be possible to spend more time on the amendment Bill.

The government sent this message to the BJP only after the Left parties and Mukherjee had a meeting early this morning where they were shown the reworked amendments.

Rupchand Pal, CPI(M) member of Parliament, explained at a press conference that as the government had yielded on most of the Left's amendments barring two, it was now ready to support the Bill.

The Left went a step further in claiming that when the Congress government had brought the first set of amendments, the BJP had supported them. When the BJP brought the second set of amendments, the Congress had supported them. For the first time, it was the Left which had leveraged its position of outside support to the UPA government and had demanded that amendments be accepted in national interest.

"This is an advancement and victory for all those who support more equitable terms in world trade. It is a victory of working people not just in India but all over the world," Pal asserted.

The changes in the Bill would not only benefit the developing countries but also the poorer sections of people, he said.

Because it does not directly affect the voting constituencies of any party, the Bill became a symbol of competitive politics, with the BJP using it to demonstrate that the differences between the Congress and the Left parties are just cosmetic and that the UPA government is hostage to the Left; and the Left trying to isolate the BJP politically using Patents law as an issue.