Left wants PM’s report card during the appraisal meeting with UPA on Tuesday
Javed M Ansari and Kay Benedict
NEW DELHI: Two years to the date, the UPA alliance rode to power in the summer of 2004, surprising friends and critics alike.
On Monday the UPA will complete two years in power, an occasion which normally would have been a cause for some celebration. However, given the ongoing student unrest on the reservation issue, the occasion will be marked by a quiet dinner for the MP's and leaders of the UPA and the supporting parties at the Prime Ministers residence.
In fact, it is the first time that the Congress is in a coalition at the centre with the Left parties supporting it from outside. It is also the first time that the Congress President is not the Prime Minister and as such there are dual centers of power.
The UPA has successfully managed both these experiments. The alliance has held firm, the outside support from the Left parties, despite the periodic turbulence is in place and there is no imminent threat to the Government. “We have every reason to be proud. The CMP is being scrupulously adhered to and implemented, a lot has already been done,” says I&B Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi.
The UPA and Left leaders will have a mid-term “appraisal” meeting on May 23 marking the government's completion of two years in office.
At the Tuesday meeting the comrades want the government to give them its report card. The Left leaders, resurgent after their resounding victory in the recent assembly elections, want the government to do some “course correction”. Left leaders are of the view that their 'aam admi' stand stood vindicated by the poll results.
Apart from the Prime Minister, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechuri, CPI boss A B Bardhan, Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas, RSP leader Abani Roy, finance minister P Chidambaram, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee, Congress president's political secretary Ahmed Patel are expected to attend.
The UPA-Left coordination meeting may be held sometime first week of June after the two-day CPM politburo meet on May 27-28, party sources said. At the Tuesday's appraisal meeting, the left wants to do a post-mortem of UPA performance in the last two years.
The left parties on Sunday changed their mind to skip the UPA dinner meeting on Monday to mark two years of Manmohan Singh government following pressure from PMO, left sources said.
Course correction
The Left wants to do a post-mortem of UPA performance in the last two years.
Foreign policy and economic issues are two major areas of confrontation, which the two sides will thrash out.
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