‘Positive’ FM may dodge Left flak in House

Watchful, the Left, however, did not assure unflinching support to all UPA economic decisions at the breakfast meeting at PM Manmohan Singh’s residence this morning. Their leaders listened to Chidambaram elaborating on the Government’s proposed commitments to the social sector especially in health, education, agricultural, rural credit and social security, including employment guarantee.

It was Chidambaram who took up the Left’s 12 demands for the Budget one by one. But Left leaders said they were circumspect because the Minister obviously could not spell out how he proposed to allocate funds for these various social sector programmes. They said: ‘‘Under the circumstances, we would prefer to wait for the actual Budget and then give our opinion.’’ The leaders said they hoped the allocations would not be ‘‘tokenisms’’ to keep the Left forces at bay.

But the 45-minute meeting did not degenerate into argument at any stage. Chidambaram said defence spending would have to be kept higher than last year’s due to prior commitments. Sources said the Defence minister interjected and said the ex-servicemen’s problems needed to be addressed and the commitments given earlier by the NDA would have to be kept.

It was clear the PM and Chidambaram, aware of the Left’s recent outbursts, went out of the way to sound reasonable. The Left leaders had gone prepared for worse but heard little to be annoyed about. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Ahmad Patel were present at the meeting.