NEW DELHI, 9 October 2007 — India yesterday appeared headed for an early parliamentary election with the government and the communist leadership exchanging sharp words over the proposed talks with the UN atomic energy agency on the contentious India-US nuclear deal.

A day after United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Sonia voiced her party’s commitment to the deal, party leaders went still further to display their support for the deal.

The Congress is ready to quit power, go for polls, if needed, as the party wanted the deal to go through under any circumstances, Minister of State for Home Prakash Jaiswal said yesterday.

Rejecting the government’s plea for go-ahead to the India-specific safeguard talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Prakash Karat warned External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee that if the government went ahead with the talks, it should be prepared to “face the consequences.”

A late evening firefighting exercise between the United Progressive Alliance and the left leaders failed to break the stalemate over the issue.

A 45-minute meeting, held at Sonia’s residence, and attended by Mukherjee, Defense Minister A.K. Antony, Karat and CPI-M politburo member Sitaram Yechury, discussed a possible rapprochement but did not find a breakthrough.

Earlier, Karat turned down Mukherjee’s suggestion that the left’s objections could be included in the IAEA talks.

Mukherjee said the government should be allowed to begin crucial discussions with the IAEA to enable the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to give India the go-ahead for the implementation of the India-US civil nuclear deal.

“Talks with IAEA are unacceptable. Talks with IAEA will amount to operationalization of the 123 agreement,” Karat is believed to have told Mukherjee, who met him yesterday evening.

Mukherjee’s plea came on the eve of IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei’s visit to the capital, during which he is expected to hold informal talks with the government on the nuclear deal.

With the communists, on whose parliamentary support the government is dependent for its survival, continuing their hard line on the nuclear deal that has now led to a confrontation, early elections now seem a distinct possibility.

The talk of elections was further accentuated with the Election Commission ordering the publication of new electoral rolls by mid-January 2008.

“The Election Commission has directed all the chief electoral officers (CEOs) of states to get the electoral rolls of 2008 published by mid-January 2008,” the poll panel said in a statement issued after the Chief Election Commission (CEC) held a review meeting with CEOs of 14 states and union territories from southern and western India.

Although it was termed a routine exercise, the announcement came on a day when the communists hit back at Sonia for her attack on critics of the nuclear deal, and said that India was capable of developing nuclear energy “primarily on a self-reliant basis.”

Reacting a day after Sonia’s comments in Haryana, the left parties said there was no need to “surrender our vital interests to America” on the plea of nuclear energy.

A left leader, who did not wish to be identified, told IANS here that after Sonia’s public criticism, there was no possibility of any rapprochement between the two sides over the nuclear deal.

In another significant development, Sonia met President Pratibha Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan yesterday. Although party leaders claimed that Sonia, who had returned from New York on Thursday, was briefing the president on her speech made at the UN General Assembly, sources indicated that the imminent general elections also came up for discussion during the meeting.

In a joint statement reacting to Sonia’s attack, the CPI-M and its three allies said: “The left parties categorically reiterate that the nuclear deal with the US is against the interests of India.

“Those who advocate the deal should know that India is capable of developing nuclear energy primarily on a self-reliant basis. We need not surrender our vital interests to America on this plea.”