The meeting will be held on Tuesday, said a member of the committee which was given a final shape last week with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee as its convener.
The meeting comes amid the BJP-led Opposition’s demand over the constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to go into the nuclear deal. The Opposition had disrupted the proceedings in Parliament for three consecutive days last week demanding a JPC, in place of the Left-UPA committee.
The committee has six members each from the Congress and the Left, besides one member each from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).
The long list
Besides Mr Mukherjee, the Congress nominees are: Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, Defence Minister A K Antony, Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz and Minister of State In the PMO Prithviraj Chavan.
Railway Minister Lalu Prasad (RJD), Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar (NCP) and Shipping Minister T R Baalu (DMK) are the other UPA members.
The Left team includes Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury (CPM), A B Bardhan and D Raja (CPI), Debabrata Biswas (Forward Bloc) and T J Chandrachoodan (RSP).
The composition of the Congress team clearly indicated that the party was prepared to argue the matter forcefully and minutely as ministers like Mukherjee, Chidambaram, Sibal and Chavan were well tuned as not to concede ground easily. Though the committee was constituted a week ago, its first meeting was delayed in view of the September 8 anti-N-deal rally of the Left at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
Sabre rattling
The “committee” was seen as more of a political mechanism between the ruling UPA and the Left Parties, whose outside support is crucial for the survival of the 39-month-old government.
Even after the announcement of the constitution of the UPA-Left mechanism, the Left parties continued with their sabre rattling against the UPA government in general and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in particular.
The continuing intransigence of the Left was also evident from the fact that the CPM had, only a week ago, issued four pamphlets attacking the government and the Prime Minister Dr Singh  for India’s growing “strategic embrace” with the United States on various fronts.  They also released a four-page “open letter” to the MPs on Saturday on the adverse effect of the Indo-US agreement on India’s independent foreign policy.
Amid the running Left threat against the government in the event of it proceeding towards operationalising the 123 agreement on Indo-US nuclear deal, the strong position of the Congress in favour of the agreement was made public by none other than party chief Sonia Gandhi herself when she said in a message in party’s mouthpiece Sandesh that the deal was in the long-term interests of the nation.
Congress hint
In a clear indication that the Congress was ready to face any situation but would not go back on its commitment to the deal, Ms Gandhi had also stressed that the Left parties and the Opposition had been kept informed about all the developments leading to signing of the civil nuclear deal with the US.