By Faraz Ahmad, IANS
New Delhi : The first meeting Tuesday of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-Left parties’ panel to examine the implications of the India-US civil nuclear deal is unlikely to take up any substantive issues but will work out the modalities of the joint mechanism.
“We need to have in place a system that addresses our concerns such as the implications of the India-specific Hyde Act of the US for the country’s independent foreign policy, sovereignty and its future weapons programmes,” a highly placed source in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) told IANS.
For starters, the first set of proposals to be put forward by the four Left parties include setting up of different sub-committees of experts to examine various aspects like foreign policy, the cost effectiveness of civilian nuclear energy, energy security and its implications for the country’s security.
The political leaders who are part of the 15-member committee could also be heading each of these sub-committees, which would then submit their respective reports, said informed sources.
The second alternative is to have all members of the UPA-Left panel take up threadbare each issue in the 123 agreement, summon experts concerned and then discuss with them the fallout of the nuclear deal.
This will help form the basis for preparing a comprehensive report on the repercussions of the deal and whether it compromises the country’s sovereignty.
“The first meeting will perforce discuss how we go about addressing some important concerns,” said D. Raja, national secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI).
The final decision on the modalities has of course to be taken jointly by the panel, added a CPI-M leader.
Most of the frontline Left leaders returned Sunday from Visakhapatnam after their protests against India’s joint naval exercises along with the US and its allies. Twenty-five warships from India, the US, Australia, Japan and Singapore participated in the four-day drill in the Bay of Bengal.
Just last week, the government had sent a missive to the A.K. Gopalan Bhawan, the CPI-M headquarters here, enquiring about the convenience of the Left leaders for holding the first panel meeting quickly, said party sources.
The committee is seen more as a political mechanism between the ruling UPA and the Left parties – whose support is crucial for the survival of the Manmohan Singh government – to avert an immediate crisis as both sides continue to remain firm on their known positions.
Despite the announcement of the constitution of the panel last week, the Left parties continued with their criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, issuing four pamphlets attacking the government for India’s growing strategic embrace with the US on various fronts.
The 15-member committee is headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and has representatives of all the four Left parties.
Also in the committee are Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Finance Minister P. Chidambram, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz – all from the Congress. The other members include Railway Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad, Transport and Shipping Minister T.R. Baalu (DMK) and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party).
The Left parties’s representatives are CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat, politburo member and CPI-M MP Sitaram Yechury,A.B. Bardhan and Raja from the CPI, Debabrata Biswas from the All India Forward Bloc and T.J. Chandrachoodan from the Revolutionary Socialist Party.