NEW DELHI: Leaders of Left parties, BSP and Telugu Desam would meet President Pratibha Patil on Tuesday to demand immediate convening of Parliament session.
The meeting comes in the wake of the Left demand that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should quit for "lying to people and Parliament" on the Indo-US nuclear deal.
They had also demanded the immediate convening of Parliament session to discuss several "burning" issues like the nuclear deal and the situation in Jammu and Kashmir as well as Orissa.
Left sources said the Rashtrapati Bhavan had fixed their appointment with the President on Tuesday.
Reacting to reports on exchange of letters between the State Department and the then US House Foreign Affairs Committee on the deal in Januray, CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat had said "the only option left to them (UPA) is that the Prime Minister should quit.
"But neither will they convene Parliament session nor will they quit... It is a shameless government."
"Why are they afraid of Parliament? Why are they running away. When a serious situation had developed in Jammu and Kashmir, a session should have been convened. But by not convening the session, the government has shown complete disregard and contempt for Parliament," he had said.
The Monsoon Session was supposed to have started in August, but the government has decided to convene the next session from October 17.
BSP chief and UP Chief Minister Mayawati has also asked the President to direct the UPA government to immediately convene Parliament session or dismiss it in case the government fails to do so.
Mayawati said here that her party was writing a letter to President Pratibha Patil to direct the Manmohan Singh government to immediately convene the session of Parliament.
She said "If the government fails to do so, it should be dismissed."
An official accompanying the CM said the letter was being delivered to the Rashtrapati Bhawan as Mayawati was addressing the media.
Charging the government with "cheating people and Parliament" on the clauses related to the Indo-US nuclear deal, the BSP president said the UPA government should step down on moral grounds.
"The alarming revelation of the clauses otherwise hidden so far has put the Congress-led Central government on a sticky wicket...it is so scared that it is not convening the session of Parliament. It is for the first time in the history of India that the Winter session has not been called and the Monsoon session is being convened in October-November," she said.
The UP Chief Minister also said the leaders who had led Congress in the past were against signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as they had termed it as biased against developing countries.
"They believed in an independent nuclear policy. Therefore, I want to ask the present leadership of Congress about their compulsions which have forced them to dump the independent nuclear policy to toe the US line," she quipped.
Questioning the UPA governments decision to go ahead with the nuclear deal, Mayawati wondered whether earlier Congress leadership lacked wisdom by not signing NPT in the past or whether India did not suffer power shortage in the Seventies and the Eighties.
Mayawati said the BSP had been against the nuclear deal from the beginning. "But Congress, Samajwadi Party and the constituents of the UPA had been supporting the deal though they were aware of the drawbacks," she added.
The BSP president suggested that the government should not carry forward with the deal, saying, "None of the political parties were taken into confidence on the nuclear deal. Moreover, the major political parties were not informed about the major clauses of the deal...we were kept in the dark."
Attacking SP on its stand on the nuclear deal, Mayawati said due to its understanding with Congress on the issue, it has dubbed the deal in national interest. "The SP has also been indulging in theatricals to justify its position on the issue," she said.
To a poser on what would be the stand on the nuclear deal once she became the Prime Minister, she said she would comment on the issue once she took up the political post.
She said while the UPA government had been misleading on the clause of termination of nuclear fuel supply once India carried out a nuclear test, the latest facts brought out by the US media present a diametrically opposite story. "This is an embarrassing situation for the UPA government," she added.
She appealed to all political parties to join hands to protest the nuclear deal which according to her compromised on the sovereignty of the nation.
Mayawati also said the statement of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was misleading. "The statement of the External Affairs minister shows that the government is desperate to get through the deal even at the cost of national interest," she added.
