Bardhan, Karat

New Delhi, Aug. 6: The Left has upped the ante against the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh and told Sonia Gandhi that unless its demands are met “soon”, it will intensify its agitation after August 15.

However, it did not ask for chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy’s head.

CPM and CPI general secretaries Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan called on the Congress president today and told her the land agitation, provoked by the Khammam police firing that killed seven Left supporters, would not be a regional one but have the presence of national leaders.

Sonia assured Karat and Bardhan that she would speak to party leaders in Andhra.

The YSR government has partly doused the tension by adopting the usual administrative reflexes such as a judicial probe, compensation for the families of the dead and the injured and suspension of the “errant” police officials.

But if the Congress hoped to buy peace with the Left through these measures, it was mistaken. The CPM and the CPI have enlarged the ambit of their protest and situated their seven demands — placed on her table — in a broader political and ideological context.

These include an official survey to identify those entitled to get land, implementing the proposals of the Koneru Ranga Rao committee on land reforms, setting up a land reforms ministry and plugging loopholes in the Indiramma Pathakam scheme.

The CPM’s Andhra unit had trashed the scheme, which envisaged basic civic amenities for one-third of the state’s villages and municipal wards, as a “big humbug”.

The Rao committee, set up in 2004, was an offshoot of negotiations between the state government and the extreme-Left groups. In the process, not only did the Left put the state government on the defensive for its “tardy” implementation of some high-profile social sector schemes but also sought to distance itself from the Congress.

The Left had an alliance with the Congress in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. But for the 2009 polls, it is apparent that the Marxists are looking at the Telugu Desam Party (a former ally) as a prospective partner and are unwilling to saddle themselves with the Congress’s omissions and commissions.

Digvijay Singh, the Congress general secretary in charge of Andhra, said he would be in Hyderabad on August 8 to discuss the Left’s demands with the chief minister and the state party president.

Although the Left is likely to raise the Andhra firing in Parliament’s monsoon session, which starts on Friday, Congress sources indicated they would not like to join issue with them and do anything to suggest the ruling coalition was “cracking”.

The Congress is keen to sustain the “unity” for the next two years or at least until the government gets crucial economic laws passed by Parliament.

Asked if the Congress would answer Khammam with Nandigram, Digvijay said: “We don’t want to take the Nandigram route although we can. They (the Left Front government in Bengal) have not ordered a judicial inquiry, punished officials or given compensations like we have. But we don’t want to get involved in mud-slinging.”

Congress sources said their strategy in the House would be to let the Left’s opponents such as the BJP and the Trinamul Congress fight their “battle” on Nandigram and Singur while they sit tight and “watch the fun”.