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Left wants UPA to take up workers' issues

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 24. The four Left parties supporting the United Progressive Alliance Government today met on the eve of the coordination committee with the ruling coalition, amid a view that the UPA Government was "lacking in political direction''.

"At a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies are bent upon raising fundamentalist issues like that of Uma Bharti, it would be difficult for the Left parties to rally working classes against these forces if the UPA Government does not take some positive steps for those who voted for them,'' the All India Forward Bloc general secretary, Debabrata Biswas told The Hindu, after a Left parties coordination committee meeting this evening.

BJP's approach

It was clear that the BJP-led Opposition was not ready to accept the mandate of the recent general elections and had been stalling Parliament on one issue or the other. The mandate for the UPA came from the working classes, the poor and the peasants and policies of the new Government should benefit them.

"We do not want the Government to step beyond the Common Minimum Programme,'' Mr. Biswas said.

The observation came as the four parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the CPI, the AIFB and Revolutionary Socialist Party, met to discuss the papers they sent to the UPA expanding the objections on the proposal to raise foreign direct investment cap in key sectors; the slashing of Employees Provident Fund rate; certain budget proposals like setting up of a public sector enterprises restructuring board; and de-reserving some items from small-scale industries sector, among others.

The papers detailing objections in FDI was limited to telecom and insurance, and apparently another on civil aviation was held up as more material was being collected.

The surge in rate of inflation was a cause for concern and was expected to figure in the discussions tomorrow.

There is a view that the Government should hold talks with the truckers as a measure to contain the spurt in prices of essential commodities.

The Uma Bharti case, too, was likely to come up.

Besides Mr. Biswas, those who attended the meeting included the CPI(M) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the Polit Bureau members, Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, the CPI general secretary, A.B. Bardhan, and its national secretary, D. Raja, and the RSP Central Committee members, Abani Roy and Manoj Bhattacharya.

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