With the members of the cabinet continuing to be divided on various contentious issues concerning amendments to the Patents Act, prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee chose the soft option to postponing the issue to the next meeting scheduled for November 23.

Sources argued that the cabinet might not be able to take up the issue on November 23 at all as most of the minister would be busy campaigning for the assembly elections. And hence, in all probability the amendments to Patents Act would be postponed to the budget session. This would also give more time to the BJP-led coalition government to fork out a consensus on various issues.

The BJP government, it may be recalled, had failed to evolve a consensus on the Patents issue after repeated attempts. The differences among themembers came to fore at the cabinet meeting on July 9 to consider the Patents amendments initiated by industry minister. As an easy way out, it was decided to refer the matter to the group of ministers.

Although the group of ministers took up the issue twice, but each time failed to evolve a consensus. At the last meeting of the group of ministers which evoked sharp reaction from some of the members, it was decided to refer the bill to the cabinet without suggesting any changes.

The cabinet for the second time took up the amendments on Wednesday and again, after objections by some ministers, deferred the decision to next meeting on November 23.

Though officially the reasons being advanced for the deferment was that more information was being sought from the concerning departments and secondly prime minister was in a hurry to address number of election meetings in the capital.

It was also officially stated that procedural formalities in respect of the amending bill were earlier stated to be completeand that the government desired to bring it as far as possible in the first half of the winter session of Parliament session beginning November 30.