Singh in the hospital on Sunday. (PTI)

New Delhi, May 19: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh turned misty-eyed when he called on the ailing Harkishen Singh Surjeet in a Noida hospital on Sunday.

Singh recalled how Surjeet was “principally responsible” for laying the foundation of the coalition and ensuring that the CPM and its allies created no insurmountable hurdle in the first year, sources said.

The Prime Minister’s trip down memory lane came a few days before the UPA completes its fourth year in office on May 22 and at a time relations with the Left have hit a bumpy road over the nuclear deal.

When the UPA assumed power, Surjeet was the CPM’s general secretary and the main conduit between the Left and the Prime Minister.

“In fact, whenever there was a problem, the Prime Minister went to Surjeet,” one of the sources said. Sitaram Yechury was the only other Left representative who was around sometimes.

Doctors today reported “very slight improvement” in the condition of Surjeet who is still on life support.

It was Surjeet who took the initiative to quash speculation on the survival of Congress-led coalition when L.K. Advani declared, day after day, that the Left would pull the plug in “four months” and some astrologers advised Atal Bihari Vajpayee not to vacate the Prime Minister’s official residence in a hurry.

Not that Singh and Surjeet were buddies of yore. When Singh made his political debut as P.V. Narasimha Rao’s finance minister, he did not know Surjeet. Later, when Singh continued to be a Rajya Sabha MP after the Congress was voted out, he met the CPM veteran “now and then”.

Surjeet’s “pragmatism and down-to-earth approach to politics” appealed to Singh. “His approach was as long as the Left was not required to vote on anything that went against its ideology and policies in Parliament, it was okay,” the source said.

However, the state of Surjeet-inspired bliss didn’t last long for Singh. Prakash Karat stepped into Surjeet’s shoes on April 11, 2005. “For some time, Surjeet would come with Karat and Yechury. That stopped after a while,” the source said.

But Congress sources said it was unrealistic to conclude that Surjeet would have taken a different stand on the nuclear deal. “There’s no way he would have gone against the CPM’s grain,” a Congress leader said.

No price control

The Prime Minister has decided against price control as a means to tackle inflation, an official source has said.

With the rate of inflation touching nearly 8 per cent, Singh held a meeting with finance minister P. Chidambaram and Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia today.

The Prime Minister made it clear that price control should not be considered an option. He felt the mechanism would take India back to the “control raj”, the source said.