| The CPI M politburo meeting sent a clear message to the government that the coordination mechanism needs to be tightened, if necessary replaced by a new system of consultation to ensure the Left is not always the last to hear of policy decisions being taken by the government.
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| "The government goes to the public with the policy decisions which forces us to go to the public too" said Sitaram Yechury, member of the politburo who briefed the press.
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| Yechury said it was necessary to put a new mechanism in place if the process was not delivering the results it was expected to.
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| He hinted that the problem could be too infrequent meetings between the government and the Left and sought consultations with the government on how often to hold meetings of the coordination committee.
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| He said that the discussions at the meeting centered around the need to implement the CMP and listed the following issues which he said the government must take up with urgency: the job guarantees scheme and the food for work programme, the need to improve rural infrastructure and education.
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| Also discussed at the meeting he said, were political issues that the Left has been keen to highlight namely the situation in Manipur and the progress of talks in various political factions in J&K.
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| He said there was need for the government to set the process in motion.
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| On issues such as FDI in telecom, the Left's objection to the inclusion of World Bank members on to the Planning Commission and EPF, he said, that these were issues routinely raised with the government and that the Left was waiting for a response in these areas.
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| Earlier in the day, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya met the Prime Minister to seek an economic package for west Bengal.
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| On Saturday Veteran leader Jyoti Basu will meet the PM and Sonia Gandhi for lunch along with a team of CPI M leaders. Though Yechury said that food was the main agenda at this meeting, he hinted that the need for tightening the coordination process, and for the Congress to fight communalism more aggressively and politically, will be on the menu.
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| Meanwhile, in a bid to apparently put things in perspective, the CPI has written a letter to Plan panel Deputy Chairman, MS Ahluwalia, explaining that they had no problems with wider consultations by Planning Commission officials and those from multilateral lending agencies such as the ADB and World Bank, but they did have objections to the "institutionalisation" of such an arrangement.
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| In an argument that had overtones of a swadeshi tilt, CPI leader AB Bardhan said there was no dearth of Indian talent and that these agencies need not be drafted into decision making, although consulting with them was not unacceptable. |
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