Vienna, Ahmedabad

CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat has issued yet another ultimatum to the Centre on the Indo-US nuclear deal. The UPA government must stop operationalisation of the deal before the end of the month, or the Left will withdraw support and force mid-term elections. This comes less than a month after the Left relented and allowed the government to hold talks on India-specific safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Curiously, Karat’s ultimatum coincides with the second round of those talks. His contention is that the Left hushed its opposition to the deal then, because it did not want to destabilise the Congress-led government before the Gujarat elections. Karat’s argument is so laboured that it only exposes a string of contradictions. But more than petty nit-picking with the Left, his ultimatum must return the Congress-led UPA to a question that has been with it for months now: does the current Lok Sabha allow it to meet its obligations as a responsible national government?

Karat has for the first time openly threatened the UPA with mid-term elections. The Congress, however, must see it less as a threat than a possibility. Karat’s invocation of the Gujarat polls is specious — it immediately begs, for example, the question that if a grand “secular” alliance was necessary before the elections, why did his party MPs walk out with the BJP on the nuclear issue in Rajya Sabha last week? There may be any number of political compulsions that may have led the CPM leader to adopt confrontationist rhetoric, but the Congress too must know that the calendar will amplify any act of political surrender. The Manmohan Singh government has decisively begun the process of ending India’s nuclear isolation. These steps bring immense opportunities for the country’s energy security. They also promise to make more coherent and contemporary this country’s world view. Now that the CPM has mentioned mid-term elections, the Congress should know that its bluff needs to be called.

The end of the election process in Gujarat would put the UPA in the last phase of its term at the Centre. The communist parties know this, as do UPA constituents and the opposition. How the prime minister and his ministers deal with the kind of bullying signalled by Prakash Karat on Sunday will be scrutinised for more than the fate of the nuclear deal. Political positioning has begun for the next Lok Sabha elections, whenever they come.