The NCP initially appeared to support the Left stand. Then, when the party realised that Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel—an NCP member—could hardly go ahead with his plans to privatise airports with such a stand, it attempted a balancing act: Patel told Outlook, "Sharad Pawar is party to the BHEL decision in the cabinet, but we feel that, in general, profit-making PSUs shouldn't be touched. We also have to factor in the Left's concerns."
The Congress is taking the optimistic line that once Sonia Gandhi talks to the PM and the Left leaders, a solution will be found. Says party spokesperson Ambika Soni: "Nothing is beyond resolution." Thus far, the PM has called on Surjeet in hospital and spoken to Karat. Sonia Gandhi has spoken to Karat on the telephone and Congress's Ahmed Patel and Prithviraj Chavan have been talking to Left leaders. On Thursday (June 30) evening, Sonia Gandhi was closeted with senior party leaders.
There is talk both in party and government that much of the current brouhaha is an attempt to weaken the market-friendly arm of the government by targetting Chidambaram. This is borne out by cpi general secretary A.B. Bardhan's statement that hinted at a continuity in policy. "(They say) disinvestment up to 49 per cent is not privatisation. By that definition, a senior minister wants to make it possible for him to offload shares of every navaratna PSU," he said. The gap between 51 per cent and 49 per cent was rather tenuous, he said, adding: "Do they mean to leave it to the next regime to offload the remaining two per cent?"
As we went to press, no option that fell short of a rollback on BHEL seemed to offer a way out. Unlike in the case of permittingFDI in telecom and airports, which the Left had opposed but had permitted in exchange for the EPF rate being rehiked to 9-5 per cent, this time both Karat and cpi national secretary D. Raja have made it clear that there will be no trade-off. APMO source said with a sense of finality, "At best, the decision can be put on hold; at worst, reversed."
