New Delhi: A 15-member UPA-Left committee to go into the concerns raised by the government's outside allies on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal was announced in the Capital on Tuesday by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
The committee will have six members each from Congress and Left parties and one each from UPA constituents RJD, DMK and the NCP.
Mukherjee's senior Cabinet colleagues A K Antony, P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Saifuddin Soz, Prithviraj Chavan, Lalu Prasad of RJD, T R Baalu of DMK and Sharad Pawar will be the other members representing the government.
Left parties will be represented by Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), A B Bardhan and D Raja (CPI), Debabrata Biswas (Forward Bloc) and T J Chandrachoodan of RSP.
Mukherjee said the date for the first meeting was yet to be decided and parried a question on the timeframe by when the committee will submit its findings.
The government had announced setting up of the committee last week, preventing a preciptative action by Left parties, which had rejected the nuclear deal and warned the government of serious consequences if it went ahead with operationalising the agreement.
Announcing the committee last on Thursday to address the concerns expressed by the Left, the Government had said that the agreement will be operationalised taking into account its findings, a formulation open to varied interpretations.
Left leaders were quick to read it as freezing the operationalisation of the deal while government sources maintained that negotiations on the agreement have not been put on hold and it was free to pursue them.
The deal, the Left contended, will result in India sacrificing the right to conduct a nuclear test and have an adverse impact on its independent foreign policy.
The relations between Congress and Left parties touched a low when the Prime Minister dared the Left parties to withdraw support on the issue and they hit back by warning of serious consequences if the deal was operationalised.
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