New Delhi, March 20: The Left has got a sympathetic ear from the Prime Minister on its request not to re-impose the 5 per cent import duty on naphtha that should help Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, but its other demands have failed to cut ice, sources said.

The Centre is unlikely to meet the demands on the dredging of Calcutta port, extension of the Metro Rail or hike in the allocation of PDS rice or rural job scheme funds, the sources said.

A team headed by Left Front chairman Biman Bose and CPM MP Sitaram Yechury had handed over the wish list to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier this week.

The delegates backed HPL’s stand against the Union budget’s proposal to re-impose the import duty on naphtha, waived two years ago. HPL is the country’s only naphtha-based petrochemical unit.

The Left leaders impressed on Singh that the price of naphtha had risen by 36 per cent over the past one year because of a spurt in global prices.

Their stand has the support of Ram Vilas Paswan, Union chemicals and fertilisers minister, who had on March 4 promised to ask Singh and the finance minister to do away with the naphtha duty.

The Left’s demands included the immediate release of funds for expanding dredging operations at Calcutta port, an increase in the rice quota for Bengal and Kerala under the public distribution system, and feasibility studies on Metro Rail extension from Garia to Baruipur and an east-west line from Barasat to Howrah.

It also asked the Centre to “regularise” the settlement of pre-Partition “refugees” from the former East Bengal, and allocate more money under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

The Prime Minister’s Office is going through the demands and, after taking a call on the feasibility of meeting them, will pass them on to the relevant ministries.

Other than the naphtha demand, government sources described the rest as “ridiculous” or a “tad unfair”.

For instance, the Centre is not ready to bankroll the dredging of Calcutta port. “When they are creating a deep-sea port (off the Nayachar island), why should we help them on another front? They cannot have both,” a source said.

A Left MP argued that since it would take at least three years for the Nayachar port to come up, the Centre ought to “do something” to help Calcutta port handle high-capacity vessels in the interval.

The eight-year-old proposal calls for massive dredging of the Hooghly near the Haldia dock for navigability. Successive governments have dragged their feet on the project.

Sources said the Prime Minister wondered why the Left wanted an increase in PDS rice allocation when Bengal always “under-procured”.

But, the sources said, the Left’s point about making subsidised foodgrains available only to those below the poverty line was “well taken”. But food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has indicated he is not keen on the idea.

As for the rural job guarantee scheme, Bengal figures near the top of the list of laggards that have failed to utilise the allocated funds.

The Left’s demands on the Metro were dismissed as “untenable”. The sources said Barasat and Baruipur were not satellite towns of Calcutta and so did not qualify for a Metro extension.

What “zapped” Singh, they said, was the Left’s demand that the Centre help settle Bengal’s “refugees”. He seemed puzzled about who the “refugees” might be until he was told that like him, they dated back to the Partition era but awaited “permanent homes”.