CPI(M) strikes back at PM,calls allegation strange

"The Prime Minister has accused the Left parties as wanting to treat him as a bonded slave. Strange that it took him over four years of being the PM on the strength of the support of the Left parties to hurl such accusations," Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of 'People Democracy'.     

The Prime Minister and the UPA government, he said, should have been a "bonded slave" to the Common Minimum Programme and "not to anybody".     

He said the PM has charged the Left parties with not allowing him to complete all the negotiations on the ground that he would come back to Parliament before finally operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal.    

"The Left parties could not agree with this proposal for the obvious reason that once the deal is approved by the US Congress, the Indian Parliament would find itself in a completely untenable situation to strike down the deal."     

Once the safeguards agreement is approved by the IAEA Board of Governors, then the deal is on an "auto-pilot course of implementation," Yechury said.     

"Stopping the deal, thus, required that it be stopped before the completion of the IAEA round," he said, contending that the Left has openly argued that the deal was against India's national interests.