Left pulls out, finally

Trust vote inevitable, but UPA jittery about making the numbers.

A trust vote in Parliament has become inevitable after the four Left parties that voted with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government announced that they would withdraw support following differences over the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, after nearly a year of threatening to do so.

This ended a 4-year alliance, pushing the UPA into a minority with 227 seats in the Lok Sabha, in which the majority mark is 273. The Left has 61 seats.

The Left parties "" the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party "" have sought an appointment with President Pratibha Patil at 10 am Wednesday to convey their decision.

Industry and markets have broadly welcomed the development, anticipating an end to an uneasy relationship that had stalled key reforms in such areas as pensions, insurance and higher foreign direct investment in several sectors, among others.

This is the first time a government ally has withdrawn support when the executive head, the prime minister, is not in the country. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is attending the G8 summit in Japan. "The Left parties' decision to withdraw support will not affect the stability of the government," he said in a statement from Hokkaido.

The Left parties have accused the government of negotiating and concluding the nuclear agreement by stealth behind the back of Parliament.

Their seats are being partly compensated by support from the 38 seats of the Samajwadi Party (SP), negotiations for which were conducted over most of last week. SP General Secretary Amar Singh met Congress President Sonia Gandhi for the second time in a week and said: "We have assured the Congress full support of the party, excepting one MP. All others will vote for the government".

However, the UPA's biggest worry appears to be to ensure it has the required numbers in Parliament. This is turning out to be an unforeseen difficulty because the SP seemed no longer sure of delivering the support of all its 39 MPs.

For one, Munawwar Hasan has already crossed the floor and joined the Bahujan Samaj Party, its rival for lower caste and Muslim votes.

Atiq Ahmad is in jail. Another, Raj Babbar, has since become an unattached MP, having joined former Prime Minister VP Singh. Both Akali Dal and Shiv Sena, which had earlier signalled they might support the government, hastily issued denials today.

The two-member National Conference, however, signalled it would support the nuclear agreement as it did not think the deal was anti-Muslim. The People's Democratic Party (PDP), which has one MP, also said it would support the government. H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular) with three MPs will decide just a day ahead which way it is going to vote, sources said.

All told, the government is sure of roughly 270 votes as of today, just five short of a confident majority.

When asked how the Congress is going to win the trust vote, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said: "The taste of the pudding is in its eating. We can't divulge our strategy. Let's see what happens when the trust vote comes"

A meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs was called late in the evening. Before this, Mukherjee, who is leader of the Lok Sabha, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Vayalar Ravi and Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar held discussions on floor management.

Some Congress and SP members, however, anticipate trouble, chiefly on whether the split with the Left parties would be healthy for the future battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Although SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav today denied that the SP was going to join the government, government sources said the offer was on the table for them to accept. Congress sources said they expected cronyism to follow.

Congressmen were also worried about the price they would have to pay for SP support both in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the SP's political base and the state with the highest seats in Parliament, and at the Centre.

On negotiations in UP, a debate has begun on whether Rampur, UP's only Muslim-majority constituency, should be represented by the Congress or the SP as part of a seat-adjustment deal. The seat is currently held by Jayaprada of SP but the Congress has an equally strong claim on it via Noor Bano.

Since the Congress has managed to win only nine Lok Sabha seats in UP, party-men apprehend that SP might not give it more than 20 seats to contest, rendering it a junior partner in India's politically most important state. If it contests only 20 out of 80 seats, coming to power on its own in the Centre can safely be viewed as a distant dream in the next elections, Congressmen say.