(Top) The front and back covers of the seminar invite; its inside pages. Telegraph pictures

New Delhi, April 18: Fighting the price rise with Amar Singh could bring its own price for the Left — a bright red face.

A seminar on inflation, organised jointly with the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), will tomorrow bring Left bosses on the same platform with a staunch reservation opponent and a man whom the CPM had accused of Hindutva links.

A glossy invite, sent out in Amar’s name, lists among the speakers motivation guru Shiv Khera, who had described the Other Backward Classes education quota as “atrocious and anti-national” and fought it in the Supreme Court.

Speaking alongside him will be the CPM and CPI general secretaries, who support the quota as a tool of social justice.

What will also bother Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan is the seminar getting associated with actor Anupam Kher, who had brought a defamation suit against former CPM chief H.S. Surjeet for calling him a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh man.

The invite shows that the event, billed a “national seminar on inflation in India”, is being organised in partnership with Open Forum, an NGO that has Kher on its board of advisers.

Having Open Forum as a partner is itself enough to make Karat uneasy, since his party has always been sceptical of NGOs and avoids sharing space with them.

However, Amar, a leader of the Samajwadi Party which is in the UNPA, is far less finicky than the CPM in choosing his friends.

Shiv Khera, whom the invite describes as “motivator, author & founder, Country First”, had dubbed the Centre’s reservation policy “atrocious, anti-national, unpatriotic and treacherous which amounts to dividing the nation for petty personal gains”.

He was not available for comments but his office confirmed he would speak at the seminar. Kher will not, but his shadow may loom.

Kher was sacked as chairman of the film censor board after the Left-backed United Progressive Alliance came to power in 2004. The removal was prompted by an article in CPM organ People’s Democracy, written by Surjeet, which named him on a list of alleged RSS functionaries “still in key positions”.

Kher filed a defamation suit in a Mumbai court, claiming he had never been associated with any political group or party.

The invite describes Open Forum as a “development organisation” registered under the Indian Societies Act. The CPM is suspicious of “apolitical” civil society activism and though sometimes sympathetic to certain NGO campaigns, such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan, likes to keep its distance.

“The party should counter the activities of the NGOs which take anti-Left positions and attempt to depoliticise people,” the CPM’s political organisation report had said at the recent party congress in Coimbatore.

Left leaders tried to play down the invite to Shiv Khera. “Personally, I don’t know who are attending the meeting and what their politics are,” said CPI leader D. Raja, who will be at the seminar but will not speak.

“Our co-operation is with the Samajwadi and other UNPA parties on the particular issue of price rise.”

The speakers will include Rajya Sabha MP Bimal Jalan, a former Reserve Bank governor, Forward Bloc secretary G. Devarajan, the RSP’s Abani Roy, Telugu Desam leader Chandrababu Naidu and the National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav will chair the meeting.