Road to Vienna: PM is firm, Sonia starts sounding senior party leaders and CMs

He is said to have told his Cabinet colleagues that India’s interests — ending its nuclear isolation and addressing its energy needs — could not be sacrificed for just a few more months in power.

The Left, however, showed no signs of a climbdown, issuing another statement today saying that a “spectre of uranium shortage” was being created to hide the Government’s “real intent” — strategic ties with the US. “Energy security does not lie in helping a moribund US nuclear industry to sell us billions of dollars of reactors, which nobody is buying in the US,” it said.

As the UPA-Left deadlock continued, NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s emissary, party general secretary D P Tripathi, today called on CPM general secretary Prakash Karat to discuss various options to meet the Left’s demand for an explicit assurance that the Government would not sign the 123 agreement if the Left allowed it to go to Vienna to confirm the India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

“We are hopeful of negotiating a settlement. I don’t see any crisis to the Government,”

Tripathi told The Sunday Express.

Sonia held discussions with Union Minister Arjun Singh, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit and AICC general secretary Prithviraj Chavan. Ahmed Patel, political secretary to the Congress president, and senior leader Digvijay Singh also held over an hour-long deliberation at the party headquarters.

Sources said Sonia sought to know from the CMs how prepared they were for elections in their states. While the CMs supported the government’s move to go to Vienna, they also expressed concerns over inflation and the adverse fallout of an early poll. Some leaders have reservations about a minority government signing a nuclear deal. In fact, Mukherjee has gone on record to say that such a deal cannot be signed as a minority government.

Earlier in the day, Sonia called Finance Minister P Chidambaram to her residence and asked him to take all possible measures to rein in inflation. And later in the evening, she met A K Antony, Mani Shankar Aiyar, and Digvijay Singh, among others, on the deadlock.

These leaders, part of the A K Antony committee, had called on her to submit the committee’s report to “re-energize” the party. Its recommendations include “one man, one post,” early declaration of candidates, fixed Rajya Sabha terms for party leaders and more weightage to candidates recommended from the grassroots levels.

The Congress president is likely to convene a Congress Working Committee meeting to discuss these — this could be used to get the CWC sense on the current deadlock too. One of the leaders present in these meetings said that while Sonia was concerned about inflation, she was not ready to give in to the Left on not going to Vienna.