Defence minister Pranab Mukherjee with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in New York. Later, in Washington, Rice said the Indo-US nuclear deal would help launch a “second Green Revolution”. (On Assignment)

Calcutta, Sept. 27: The CPM politburo meeting tomorrow, followed by its three-day central committee session, is likely to try and find a way to buy time on the nuclear deal till the party is ready for elections.

The party will also discuss how to dissociate from the UPA government, if it goes ahead with the deal, while not bringing it down and forcing a mid-term poll.

According to central committee members, the CPM units in Left-ruled Bengal and Kerala are not ready for elections. “Moreover, the whole party is busy in organisational conferences which will be completed in the party congress in March. We can’t hold the congress earlier,” a committee member from Bengal said.

If elections are inevitable, it would be better to hold them “after the panchayat polls here in May”, he added.

Officially, though, the party still holds that the ball is in the Congress’s court. “We don’t want to bring down the government. It’s up to the government to decide whether they want to continue or not,’’ politburo member S.R. Pillai said.

While the Bengal comrades led by Jyoti Basu are likely to push for a longer rope to the Congress than Prakash Karat is ready to give, the general secretary’s supporters here point out that he never called for snap polls.

Central committee members said the party could ask for a national law to govern international treaties — so that all treaties have to be ratified by Parliament.

“The government says parliamentary ratification of international treaties is not mandatory under the Constitution. But Article 253 of the Constitution allows room for discussion on such treaties in Parliament. The question is whether the government has the political will to do so,’’ said CPM central secretariat member Nilotpal Basu.

The CPM leader added that the party would ask “the government to enact a law on treaties… to ensure legislative scrutiny of international agreements”.

Party leaders said they would not ask for the deal to be scrapped but try to delay it by asking the government to extract more “safeguards” from the US.

“The government must ask the US to amend its atomic energy laws to ensure uninterrupted N-fuel supply and unhindered reprocessing and enrichment rights as it had given to France and Japan,’’ Basu said.

CPM state secretary and politburo member Biman Bose echoed him. “We want adequate safeguards in the nuclear deal so that Indian sovereignty is not compromised.”

The party might ask the Centre to amend the Indian Atomic Energy Act to ensure such safeguards. “The government can’t operationalise the 123 Agreement without amending our act since it will have to make room for the US and other foreign private sector nuclear energy companies. It needs our support to pass such amendment in Parliament. So, we will ask it to incorporate safeguards against the impact of the Hyde Act,’’ said central committee member Mohammad Salim.

But Basu felt that would not “insulate us from American policy”. “We cannot be party to a deal with America that goes against the people’s mandate,’’ he added.

Even if the CPM withdraws support, it will not topple the Manmohan Singh government and would want it to continue as a minority regime like P.V. Narasimha Rao’s, sources said.

“The day we decide to snap ties, we will inform the President. But we won’t go for any no-confidence motion in Parliament. It will be left to the BJP to bring down the government on the nuclear issue, which it would not want to, given the previous NDA government’s role in the Indo-US deal,” a central committee member said.

But what if BJP does try to bring down the government? “We hope Mayavati and others would save the Congress,” he said, adding the Left would never be seen voting with the BJP in Parliament.