CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat may have indicated his willingness to do business with the Congress again, but his nuclear deal showdown with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, now the UPA’s official PM candidate, continues to be an irritant between the two.

On a day when Congress president Sonia Gandhi released the party’s manifesto and made it clear that Singh was the UPA’s prime ministerial candidate, Karat took potshots at him saying his professed “deep love” for former US President George W Bush should have found a mention in the Congress manifesto.

“This is the Prime Minister who went on record expressing his deep love for (former US President) George Bush. The Congress should have included this in their election manifesto,” the CPI(M) top boss told reporters here while releasing a joint appeal of the Left parties.

On his part, Singh described his former allies as “regressive” who attempted to exercise authority without taking on any responsibility. Left leaders, on the other hand, proudly accepted the “regressive” tag. “Yes, we negated all the harmful things the Congress-led Government wanted to do. We negated all their wrong policies. That is what the Prime Minister is acknowledging today,” CPI general secretary A B Bardhan said. He gave examples of dilution of equity of PSUs, privatising bank and insurance sectors and investing pension funds in the stock market as the harmful things the Left had vetoed.

In the joint appeal, the Left said the anti-people policies of the UPA Government and its strategic ties with the US had compromised national sovereignty. “All our (Left’s) negative moves helped the country face the global meltdown and its impact on our economy was not as hard as it would have been otherwise,” they claimed. Referring to the Congress’ charge that the Left helped BJP’s electoral growth, Karat said the Congress could not stop the saffron party in states ruled by them whereas the Left-ruled states have not given the BJP even a single seat.