The fate of the Indo-US nuclear deal may be “open-ended” as it is and no one will admit, in public, that early elections is an option but political parties are stepping up their gears for a final showdown.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, in fact, today acted as a catalyst to rejuvenate a moribund United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), even as the Publicity and Publication Committee of the ruling Congress finetuned its strategy to launch a drive to showcase the UPA Government’s policies.

By this evening, the newly appointed UNPA Chairperson Mulayam Singh Yadav declared the Third Front’s decision to launch a nationwide campaign against the UPA Government’s policies, starting with an agitation over its anti-farmer policies in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

The new UNPA convener, TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu, declared that the nuclear deal is “no longer a UPA issue” it is a national issue and the Government must not proceed without Parliament’s approval. “We are certainly firmly with the Left parties,” said UNPA spokesperson Amar Singh. Sharing the dais with them were INLD leader Om Prakash Chautala and AGP leader Brindaban Goswami, among others.

At the AICC headquarters, chairperson of the AICC Publicity Committee Digvijay Singh declared that the Congress was gearing up for a publicity blitzkrieg including circulation of multi-lingual printed materials, advertisements, media interviews and chats, to “expose” the NDA regime’s role in the Sethusamudram project, which had figured in the BJP and the NDA manifesto in 1999.

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