“Our agenda is the nuclear deal and not the stability of the government or an early or late election. We are opposed to the deal because we think it is not in the interest of the country,” CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.


Whether the government will go in for early elections is for them to decide, he said in reply to a question on the sidelines of the party Central Committee meeting here. At the same time, he recalled that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said the survival of the government was more important than the deal and ruled out early elections.

He reminded the government that there is a written agreement in the UPA-Left Committee that it will not sign any agreement with the IAEA and come back to the committee. It is only after the committee takes a decision that the government can take the next step, he said.

According to the written agreement at the UPA-Left committee, Yechury noted that the government will proceed on the basis of the committee’s finding.”If the committee says it is not correct, then the government has to follow it,” he added.

The CPM’s plain talk has come a day after the CPI formally warning the government on withdrawal of support if it goes ahead with the nuclear deal.

CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan’s letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came a day after stiff deadline set by CPM to the government to convene a meeting of the UPA-Left Committee on the nuclear deal by March 15 to discuss issues in the wake of US “pressures” to implement the deal.

‘Govt will stay’
Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee downplayed the Left’s threat to withdraw support and made it clear that neither the Congress nor its allies were thinking of elections before 2009 and there was no question of “sacrificing” the government for the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Mukherjee said India had conveyed to the US that it could not work “within a specific time-frame” to conclude the deal.

“I don’t think so, because we want to have elections in due time (in 2009),” Mukherjee said when asked about the possibility of early polls.

While noting that “many unforeseen things happen” in coalition politics, he said “but the things you have referred to are not unforeseen because the position of Left parties is well known to us”.

He was responding to the threat issued by the Left parties of withdrawal of support if the government went ahead with operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal.

“I do not visualise that anybody is thinking of early elections. None of the coalition partners or coalition supporters are talking of early elections,” Mukherjee insisted.

“Nobody is talking of holding elections now. There is no talk of sacrificing the government for something,” he said when asked if there was a debate in the Congress about whether the nuclear deal is worth sacrificing the government for.