It was the turn of the Left parties to force an adjournment of the Lok Sabha well before schedule this afternoon, with agitated CPI and CPI(M) MPs—supported by their colleagues in the RJD, Samajwadi Party and even the BJP—vociferously protesting the proposed cut in the Employees’ Provident Fund interest rate from 9.5 percent to 8.5 percent.During Zero Hour, Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI) strongly objected to Labour Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao making a statement on the interest cut outside the House even though Parliament was in session. The decision, he said, was ‘‘causing grave distress’’ to four crore workers, many of whom were in the unorganised sector. It would cost the government only Rs 700 crore to retain the old interest rate—a pittance compared to the Rs 7,000 crore the government chose to forego by reducing the turnover tax from 0.1 percent to 0.05 percent in the face of protests from stock brokers after last year’s budget, he said.Basudeb Acharia (CPI-M) demanded that the government immediately review the decision and Ajay Chakrabarty (CPI) who described it as a ‘‘shocking and anti-people decision.’’ BJP member Santosh Gangwar also offered what Dasgupta described as ‘‘unsolicited support.’’ Dasgupta said it was the NDA government which had reduced the interest rate on the Special Deposit Scheme (SDS)—with deposits worth over Rs 1,00,000 crore—from 12 to 8 percent, as a result of which the EPF interest rate was also reduced.Angry at the fact that the Left parties had once again hijacked a populist issue at the cost of the Opposition, the BJP later accused them of double standards and hypocrisy. BJP spokesman V K Malhotra said the communists’ role was ‘‘shameful’’ because even while they vociferously protested the government’s decisions on the floor of Parliament and on the streets outside, they continued to back the ruling coalition. Given the Left’s ‘‘blanket support’’ to the UPA, their opposition to its policies was no more than a charade, he said, predicting that they would soon ‘‘compromise’’ even on the issue of EPF interest rate cut.
