Left for special session on patents Bill

After demanding that the winter session of Parliament be extended beyond December 23, the Left parties today sought a special session in January to pass the Third Patents (Amendment) Bill after a standing committee had studied the present draft for a month.

"We are against the promulgation of an ordinance to amend the Patents Act since the standing committee can be bypassed when the ordinance is replaced by a law. It is important to seek experts' opinion on the Bill," said Basudeb Acharia, CPI(M) parliamentary group leader.

He said the government should introduce the Bill in this session and refer it to a select committee or a standing committee. On the January 1, 2005 deadline for TRIPS compliance, he cited the example of the first amendment to the Patents Act, which was brought with retrospective effect from 1995 though the Bill was passed in 1998.

On the petroleum price hike, the Left said it did not want a discussion under Section 184, which allowed the Speaker to put the discussion to vote.

"If the Spe-aker agrees to a discussion under Section 184, we will not vote against the government. We do not want to allow a fascist party to return to power," he said.

The BJP has been daring the Left to have a discussion on the hike under Section 184 to prove the seriousness of its demand for a rollback of the petroleum price hike.

"We want a discussion under Section 193.", he said. "Let them tell us whether there is any justification for the rise in prices when the international fuel prices are going down," he said.

Acharia said the erstwhile NDA government had "imposed a burden of over Rs 35,000 crore" on the people in terms of cess and duties on petro products.

He said the hike in diesel prices had led to an increase of 7.5 per cent in the freight charges which has had a multiplier effect by raising the prices of steel, fertiliser, iron ore and construction materials.

"The cascading effect of the diesel hike was affecting the common man due to the increase in railway freight charges," he added.

The CPI(M) leader said the government should try to increase the freight traffic from around 500 million tonnes to 600-650 million tonnes rather than increase the freight rates.

Acharia said the Left parties would also raise the issues of employment guarantee scheme and a law to tackle communal riots in Parliament next week. He said the draft of the legislation to guarantee 100 days of employment has been prepared but was yet to get the nod from the Union Cabinet.

"We want the Bill to be tabled in this session to fulfil one of the promises made in the common minimum programme," he said

The other issues the Left parties, they said, would raise in the current session include the disinvestment of profit-making PSUs, the delay in getting the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Units (BRPSE) underway, a legislation against communalism, farmer's suicides and the universalization of the public distribution system.