Senior Cabinet Minister Sharad Pawar has said that he was not in favour of proceeding with the nuclear deal without approval of the Left parties.
NEW DELHI: Senior Cabinet Minister Sharad Pawar has said that he was not in favour of proceeding with the nuclear deal without approval of the Left parties as it would be against the "coalition dharma".
"Left has some doubts over the Indo-US nuclear deal. We are in the coalition government and it will be difficult to proceed with the deal without addressing all the issues with the Left front," Pawar told Prabhu Chawla in an interview on a Hindi news channel.
The Union Agriculture Minister said, "we are running the government with the support of the Left and it will be against the coalition dharma to proceed with the deal without the Left's approval".
"We are in constant touch with the Left parties to address all their concerns on this issue," Pawar, who is also a prominent member of the UPA-Left coordination committee on the nuclear deal, said.
Asked about the prospects of the third front emerging as a strong force, he said "It is very difficult to form a government at the Centre without the support of either the Congress or the BJP.
"There cannot be any viable alternative for forming the Government without the support of these two parties. We (NCP) are not interested in joining the third front".
When asked about the reasons for the defeat of UPA parties in the Assembly elections in the past few years, Pawar was of the opinion that UPA unlike NDA does not project one leader and fights against its own allies at the centre in the Assembly elections. This has led to the debacle of UPA parties in the recent Assembly polls.
Pawar said, "If we fight together with Manmohan Singh as our leader, I am sure the results would be different. In the coming Lok Sabha elections if UPA decides to nominate one leader and fight elections then the results would be very different."
On price rise, he admitted that inflation is quite high but defending the government, said, "I agree that the inflation is quite high but production of agricultural commodities have also broken the earlier records."
"Earlier, farmers would not get right price for foodgrains but now get they get the right price," he said.
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