The Congress is still not willing to admit that the UPA Government has pressed the pause button on the Indo-US nuclear deal, but the stacks of booklets on the deal gathering dust in the storeroom of the party headquarters tell a different story. Further printing of these booklets, which were to be distributed among party workers across the country to take on the propaganda of the Left and the BJP on the matter, has also been stopped. Another indication came from Union Minister Kapil Sibal’s refusal to talk about his itinerary. He had been asked by the party high command to explain and sell the deal among people through press conferences in major cities. Before the Government decided to go easy on the deal on October 9, Sibal had travelled to Thiruvananthapuram, Kolkata, Hyderabad and other cities to launch a frontal attack on the Left. For Sibal, however, there’s a silver lining. Having had to cancel his trips to the US, Japan and Canada in the last few weeks in the interest of his party, the Science and Technology Minister could finally take off for Paris in the last week of October after the last UPA-Left nuke panel meeting.
