Now the Left will tell the UPA that Parliament should take up the issue in the monsoon session to adopt the Bill and send it back to the President.

Included in the list are posts held by top Left leaders, among them Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, the party’s Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Mohammad Salim and senior leader Hannan Mollah.

The Left has attacked other institutions earlier when its key constituencies have been affected. Last month, following the Supreme Court’s refusal to stay demolitions of unauthorized constructions in Delhi after Parliament had passed a Bill providing for a year’s moratorium on the issue—the President had not signed the Bill till then—CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta had said in the Lok Sabha that the Supreme Court was “hell bent on humiliating Parliament.”

Besides the noise on the office of profit Bill, the Left leaders today threatened strikes and widespread protests if prices of petro products were raised again.

They also decided to send a note to the government on its performance over the past two years, focusing on what they call “deviations” from the National Common Minimum Programme. “We’ll give them (the government) the note in advance to consider it,” said Karat. “We will pin them down on issues and then see what to do depending on their response. The UPA-Left coordination meetings won’t be held till the note has been prepared and they are ready with their reply.”

... contd.