Sitaram Yechury with CPI’s AB Bardhan and CPM general secretary Prakash Karat in Coimbatore. (PTI)

Coimbatore, March 30: The Centre will “run a risk” if it jumps the gun on the nuclear deal while the joint panel is considering the safeguards agreement’s text, the CPM warned today.

“The Left-UPA co-ordination committee will meet at the end of this month. Let them (the Centre) place the text of the agreement with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency),” politburo member Sitaram Yechury told reporters on the second day of the CPM party congress.

“In the meantime, if the government moves ahead to ratify it by the IAEA board of governors, the deal will be on auto-pilot. Then we will have nothing to do as it will initialise the process of talks with the Nuclear Suppliers Group. So if the government moves to the board, it will run a risk.”

Asked about reports that foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had bought time from the US to evolve a “domestic consensus” on the deal, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat was dismissive.

“We don’t consider it an achievement (of the government). It’s their business (whether to buy time or not). Our understanding is clear. They should not move ahead till the Left-UPA committee completes its job,” Karat said.

Politburo member M.K. Pandhe hinted that the party would try and delay the final IAEA talks keeping in mind the poll calendars in the US and India. “After September, the US will be completely in election mode while we will go to the polls next year,” he said.

Although the possibility of a snap election — which had looked likely during the worst phase of the deal standoff last year — has been averted for now, the CPM seems unsure about what the government’s next move might be.

Yechury, therefore, stepped up the campaign for a “third alternative” today. But he took care to add that “keeping the communal forces away from power remains the supreme objective of the party”.

“The CPM does not subscribe to the theory of equi-distance from the Congress and the BJP since the communal forces continue to be a major threat to the country. We supported the Congress-led UPA to keep the BJP out of power,” the Rajya Sabha member said.

“But the reckless and unbridled liberalisation and changes in foreign policy to suit US interests have made the third alternative a political imperative.”

Yechury indicated that the party would try to draft in the allies of the Congress and the BJP. Talks would be held on the “programmatical unity with the non- Left parties that believe in secularism, an independent foreign policy and pro-people economics”.

But he said the platform “may or may not” be formed before the next general election since it all “depends on the responses of other parties — whether they would like to join us”.

For now, the CPM will join hands with all “non-Congress, anti-BJP chief ministers” to demand “drastic reconstruction of Centre-state relations”. It also plans a nation-wide agitation on price rise.

The party congress today passed resolutions on both issues. Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee moved one that expressed “serious concern over the deterioration in Centre-state relations in all spheres”.

The resolution on price rise demanded a ban on futures trading in essential commodities, a reduction of fuel prices and strengthening of the public distribution system.