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After the Left parties have withdrawn support to the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government President Pratibha Patil has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to meet her on Thursday.

BJP demanded that the government be asked to prove its majority within a week and in wake of these political crises, Singh who is in Japan for the G-8 summit is asked by Patil to meet her. He will be back past midnight.

Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh and its Parliamentary party leader Ramgopal Yadav also met the President and gave a fresh letter of support of 39 of its MPs to the government.

Earlier in the day, top leaders of CPM, CPI, Forward Bloc and RSP met President Pratibha Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan and submitted a list of 60 Members of Parliament and handed over separate letters withdrawing their support to the government. They also submitted a joint communication asking her to “direct the Prime Minister to seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha immediately”.

Lok Sabha has a total of 543 members. SP, PDP and some independents are supporting the government and UPA hopes to get 272 votes for a simple majority in the Lok Sabha.

Ajit Singh-led RLD, JD(S) headed by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, Mamta Bannerjee’s Trinamul Congress and TRS come in the “undecided” category but have given enough hints of backing the government in a trust vote.

There are clouds of worries in the Indian political ring. There is a curiosity among all regarding government’s survival? Now there are uncertainties whether the government will able to prove a vote of confidence within a week and will retain its power or will it fall??

Tags: Congress, G-8, India, JD, Manmohan Singh, MM Singh, PM, Pratibha Patil, President, RLD, SP, TMC, UPA

After the Left has set a July 7 deadline for the government to clarify its position on whether it was going ahead on the Indo-US nuclear deal, Congress on Friday sought to reject the deadline. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told reporters that Sovereign governments or political parties cannot be subjected to deadlines.

Shighvi told that it is the time to work on triple objectives- to do a nuclear deal in national interest, to carry along our allies with us for that purpose and to go to elections as per the Constitutional schedule. Rejecting suggestions of an “unholy alliance”, Singhvi said, “Samajwadi Party and the Congress have never been mutually untouchable in the same sense as the Left and the BJP or the Congress and the BJP.”

Singhvi said the Congress had not changed its stand on the nuclear deal “by even one millimeter”.  He said that the deal is totally in national interest.

“We are happy that other parties in the national interest are slowly converging to our view point,” he said.

Left is strongly opposing the deal to happen. The party has threatened to withdraw support for the government if it seeks approval for the deal from IAEA, the next international move needed to operationalise the pact.

Yesterday Left parties gave a deadline to the government saying that it must tell by July 7 about its plans towards approaching the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the safeguards agreement, if any.

“We wish to know definitely whether the government is proceeding to seek the approval of the safeguards agreement by the board of governors of the IAEA,” said Prakash Karat, CPI (M) General Secretary, reading out a letter addressed to the government.

The party said it would launch a national campaign from July 14 to explain its opposition to the nuclear deal and what it called “runaway” inflation.

Tags: BJP, Congress, India, Nuclear deal, Nuke Deal, Samajwadi Party, SP, US