in the same boat: Manmohan Singh with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Delhi on Tuesday. (AFP)

New Delhi, Aug. 21: When Manmohan Singh cedes the floor to Shinzo Abe in a joint session of Parliament tomorrow, the Japanese Prime Minister cannot but reflect on the uncanny parallel back home.

Abe is almost as politically weak in Japan these days as Singh could be if the Left withdraws support.

About three weeks ago, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in Japan’s Upper House over a raging pension scandal.

As a consequence, even the Japanese minority Prime Minister’s trip to India was in doubt.

But Abe decided to press ahead.

At stake was the offer of a “strategic partnership’’ with India that could eventually act as a counterweight to China and several big ticket infrastructure projects in several parts of India, including Bengal.

The cherry on the cake? The path-breaking nuclear deal India had just pulled off with the US, a close ally of the Japanese. President George W. Bush was to have been the invisible third man in all the photo-ops between Singh and Abe.

But what a difference three weeks can make!

Singh and Abe will still smile and shake hands before the cameras, but it’s not going to be the same thing. At tomorrow’s photo-op, Bush will still be the invisible third person, only this time neither leader is likely to publicly declare his friendship with America.

A senior Japanese government official today conceded that this was a particularly trying period in the political lives of both leaders. The official would not come on record fearing possible diplomatic impropriety, that too in a foreign country.

“It is a fact that both leaders, Prime Ministers Singh and Abe, face difficult political situations,’’ the Japanese official said.

However, he added: “Whatever political developments will emerge in Japan and India, we are confident that the agreements from the summit will be passed on to future governments.’’

That was an oblique reference to the Indo-US nuclear deal being bitterly contested in Parliament these days. Some politicians have been saying that if they came to power, the deal signed by the UPA government would be scrapped.

Officials from both sides insisted that in the talks between the two Prime Ministers tomorrow, however politically shaky their governments may be, India would ask for Japan’s support for the Indo-US pact at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting. It is more than likely that Japan will give it.

The Japanese official pointed out that the nuclear issue remained a sensitive subject back home, but Tokyo also understood India’s need for clean and assured supplies of energy for its galloping domestic needs and that nuclear energy was one answer.

Abe leaves for Calcutta on August 23. He is scheduled to meet the family of Radha Binod Pal, the only judge who gave a dissenting judgment at the Tokyo Tribunals after World War II, proclaiming the Japanese “not guilty”.

Dynasty at dinner

The two Prime Ministers had unusual company at dinner on Tuesday.

Rahul Gandhi, Supriya Sule and Kanimozhi — representing the Nehru-Gandhi, Pawar and Karunanidhi dynasties — were at hand along with nuclear negotiators M.K. Narayanan and Shiv Shankar Menon. Trouble-shooter Pranab Mukherjee was also invited.