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

According to sources, while the commerce minister RK Hedge was keen on pressing the amendments initiated by industry ministry way back in July 1998, it was objected to by HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi and some other ministers toeing the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch line.

With the consensus on various contentious issues not in sight among the members of the cabinet, it in unlikely that the amendments to the Patents Act would be taken up in the winter session of parliament as planned earlier. The winter session begins on November 30.

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 the members 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 complete and 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.