Left gains most from Nanavati row

It was advantage Left in the controversy over the Nanavati Commission report on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 that had references critical of the conduct of bureaucrats and politicians including Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.

It was the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that tabled the adjournment motion, which was defeated. But it was the Left that established itself as the "only secular force in the country, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari" and succeeded in creating the impression that it was the Left that forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resolve to make the council of ministers lighter by one.

The Prime Minister met Tytler in the morning and asked him to quit.

This followed a meeting of the four Left parties with the Prime Minister where they said they would support the government on the adjournment motion only if all their demands were met""the reopening and re-examination of cases against Tytler and Sajjan Kumar; that those bureaucrats against whom there was evidence in the Nanavati report should be punished and that orphans of the 1984 riots should be given jobs by the government. If the government didn't do this, the Left said, they would not support the government.

The UPA was not unaware of this. At the yeterday's core group meeting, comprising Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, her political advisor Ahmad Patel, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, decided that Tytler might have to go and began preparing ground for this. The idea was to ensure no political initiative was yielded to the Opposition.

Tytler ran from pillar to post trying to save his berth in the council of ministers. He appealed to Gandhi who repeated the Prime Minister's request. All that managers seemed to be working out was the timing of his exit.

In the whole episode, the Left parties were the clear winners. At one stroke not only did they best a lackadaisical NDA, but also while continuing to be allies of the government, proved to be the United Progressive Allaince (UPA)'s bitterest critics.

Till the evening, smarting at the blow dealt by the Left the Congress racked its brains to find some mid way by which it could keep its dignity and protect one of its ministers without alienating their Left allies.

Till the morning on Wednesday, senior ministers in the Congress were giving excuses for retaining Tytler "" that he had won several elections, that the issue was 21 years old, ets. But by the evening they had all changed their tune.

The BJP appears to have the main losers in the Nanavati tangle. Not only did the report did not contain the severe indictment that they had expected (the commission was appointed by the NDA government in 2000), but they were unable to claim the moral high ground. It took them more than 24 hours to react to the report in an effective manner.

By then the Left had already started snatched the political initiative and had begun pressurising the government to drop Tytler.

So much so, that BJP parliamentary party spokesperson Sushma Swaraj had to vehemently deny that the party had yielded opposition space to the Left.

She admitted that for getting the government to move against its own better judgement (a job of the opposition) there was no one to beat the Left. "They are supporting the government, obviously the government has to listen to them," she said.