Karat and Bardhan after meeting the President in New Delhi on Wednesday. Picture by Rajesh Kumar.

New Delhi, July 9: The Left completed break-up formalities with the UPA today and wasted no time in declaring its campaign theme — nuclear deal and price rise.

“We cannot be a party to a government whose priority is to fulfil its commitment to George Bush and not to the people of India,” CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said after handing President Pratibha Patil the letter withdrawing support to the Centre.

Karat went to Rashtrapati Bhavan along with the general secretaries of the three other Left parties who submitted separate letters. A joint letter was also given, requesting the President to “direct the Prime Minister to seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha immediately”.

The communists prepared to tell people that “communal forces” would capitalise on the present crisis, which was “a creation of the Congress”. “The Congress was determined to go ahead with a further right-wing shift in foreign and domestic policies, providing a fertile ground for the communal forces,” Karat said.

Other than the nuke deal, which Karat dubbed “notorious”, price rise, agrarian crisis and unemployment would be cited as the reasons for ending support.

The four Left partners charged the government and the Congress with “always looking up to the US” and “disregarding” the majority voice in Parliament on the deal.

The government has not been transparent, they said, and demanded that the text of the safeguards agreement, to be finalised with the IAEA, be made public.

Karat said the government had “plunged the country into a political crisis when people were groaning under price rise and a double-digit inflation”. He claimed the Left’s list of “five urgent steps” to control prices had been rejected, saying this showed that the government was “callous to the sufferings of people”.

Coming back to the nuclear deal, the communists said the government had “violated” the November 16, 2007 understanding at the UPA-Left committee under which the next step on the deal was to be taken only after the joint panel had finalised its findings, Karat said.

He countered foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee’s argument that the safeguards draft was “classified” by saying: “We would like to know who has declared it classified. We would like to know whether it is the government's decision to ask the IAEA to keep it classified.”

Karat pointed out that a “protocol” the US has been discussing with the IAEA was available to all members of US Congress and on the Internet.

The suggestion was that India’s safeguards text, too, could be put in public domain.