Left parties dare BJP to move No Trust vote

New Delhi, Jul 20: Barely three days before the start of the Monsoon session, the Left parties today ridiculed the BJP for its reported plan to move a no trust vote against the UPA government on the Office of Profit Bill and asserted the two-year-old coalition is stable.

The leaders of CPI, CPI(M) and Forward Bloc, however, made it clear that they would put the government in the dock in Parliament beginning July 24 over its ''inefficiency'' in containing price rise, resurgence of terrorism, and the agrarian crisis still leading to farmers' suicides.

The government's inability to bring legislation on the Women's Reservation Bill, the Tribal Bill and the Unorganised Sector Workers' Bill are the other issues on which the Left would be taking the government head on.

The Left-UPA Coordination panel is scheduled to meet on Saturday.

CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan said, "the BJP's reported move to bring no confidence vote is a mere political gimmick as it wants to re-occupy the opposition space from which it has been dislodged.

It has become directionless and is riddled with internal crisis." Mr Bardhan, the veteran communist and freedom fighter, said the BJP was doing a lip service on the price rise front as during its own six-year regime, it allowed forward trading and dismantled the entire machinery that could have helped to contain price rise.

CPI Floor leader in the Lok Sabha Gurudas Dasgupta asserted, "let the BJP bring a vote of no confidence.... The UPA government is not shaky as projected by the communal forces. It is very stable." Elaborating, CPI national Secretary Shamim Faizi said the BJP still had no issue. As far as economic issues were concerned, most of the issues that the Left was fighting for had been inherited from the previous NDA regime.

"Indeed there is no basic difference between the BJP and the Congress on issues like the disinvestment spree of profit making PSUs, privatisation staking the pension fund in the Stock market and the so called labour reforms. It will be the Left alone which will really fight against the anti-people economic policies druing the monsoon session of Parliament." Mr Faizi, CPI Weekly New Age editor, said the Left had submitted a nine-page note on all these issues and expected a concrete response from the government when the leaders of the UPA and the Left would meet here on July 22.

The CPI leader said as far as the office of profit was concerned, the BJP was really in a fix. "Its state government in Jharkhand survived on the provisions of retrospective effect that it was supposedly opposed at the Centre." He said the real fight during the Monsoon session would be on concrete issues like the Tribals Bill, the government's move to bring legislaiton for privatisation of financial sector including the banks and Women's Reservaiton Bill. Incidentally, the BJP is badly divided on all such issues." ''It is so widely known that the onslaughts by Ms Uma Bharti and Madan Lal Khurana on the BJP top leadership, the Mahajan episode have already dented the image of the" party with a difference. Its troubles have been further compounded by the recent revelations by mr Jaswant Singh's forthcoming book 'Call to Honour'." The Left leaders said the UP assembly elections early next year had led to certain political formulations. The SP and the BSP had re-positioned themselves as they feared inroads by the Congress in certain pockets of the Hindi heartland.

The BJP was simply daydreaming by pinning hopes on the threatened withdrwal of support by the SP and the BSP, they said adding that numbers in the 14th Lok Sabha did not favour any such fallout. The Left had made it amply clear that it would pressure the government by all means, short of withdrawal of their support.

CPI(M) deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Salim Mohammad said the Left would definitely ask the Congres-led coalition on how it intended to contain the problems relating to price rise, internal security and on what they had achieved till now to help the 'Aaam Aadmi'.

The CPI(M) leader asked the NDA leadership to refrain from always raising the "emotive and conflicting" issues. "Will it tell us during the last two years as the main opposition which sustainable issues had it raised to put the government in the dock?" "The NDA must remember that the UPA is not unstable even as the Congress too should realise that the Left support to it is based not merely on the basis of numbers but on the basis of the CMP - the document of governance.' CPI(M) Politburo member M K Pandhe said, "the BJP's own position is shaky. What moral right has it to raise issues of internal security when it surrendered to terrorists and foreign powers in the Kandahar episode"? ON BSP's threat to withdraw support to the government on price rise isues, Mr Pandhe, the veteran Communist quipped, "it does not make much of a difference to the stability of the Manmohan Singh government." On the government's response to the Left page note on the government's two years' performance, Forward Bloc national Secretary G Devrajan said," yes, we are expecting an concrete response from the government at the UPA-Left Coordinaiton Meet... We learn that the government has an answer prepared by several Union Ministers- P Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee, Shivraj Patil among others."

UNI