New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar's fresh bid to break the political deadlock hurting democracy failed yesterday leaving questions over the upcoming budget session of Parliament.

Kumar met leaders from the communist and other opposition parties on Friday without achieving the desired result.

Earlier Thursday, she had brought together senior leaders of the principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the representatives of the federal government.

The meeting was attended by Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who is Leader of House in the Lok Sabha represented the government at the Thursday meeting.

The Speaker had convened an all-party meeting during the winter session which concluded earlier this month without transacting any business with the relentless opposition forcing adjournments of both Houses of Parliament over its demand that the estimated 1.7-trillion rupee (Dh136 billion) telecom scam must be probed by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which was not acceptable to the government. CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat, CPI (M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury and the Janata Dal (United) chief Sharad Yadav were among the leaders who attended yesterday's meeting.

Separate meetings

Kumar decided to meet leaders of various political parties separately instead of convening another round of all-party meeting to find out their respective stands.

However, her latest efforts failed with both the government and the opposition refusing to budge form their stated respective stands.

Despite her failure to break the logjam, Kumar sounded hopeful that the deadlock would end before the next session of Parliament slated to begin in the last week of February.

"Both sides are very keen that the next session [of Parliament] should run in order... I am very, very optimistic on how the events will unfold," she said after the meeting.

The government offered the explanation that since the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament besides the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate were probing the telecom scam, there was no justification for blocking Parliament.

The government had earlier offered to convene a special session of Parliament in the middle of January to debate the telecom scam, while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formally offered to break the tradition and appear before the PAC without much result as the entire opposition continues to be united that nothing less than the JPC probe would satisfy them.

PAC chairman

Chances of the Prime Minister Singh appearing before the PAC have since receded with the PAC chairman Murli Manohar Joshi falling in line with his Bharatiya Janata Party's stand that the JPC is the platform where the Prime Minister should appear.

Joshi had earlier stated that the PAC was equipped enough to probe the entire gamut of the scam. However, he changed his stand after the BJP president Nitin Gadkari called on him pointing out that his independent stand was hurting the BJP's cause.