New Delhi, Aug 12 (IANS): Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal Friday met opposition leaders and sought their cooperation for the smooth functioning of parliament.

Parliament has been repeatedly stalled on one issue or another. In a bid to ensure that important business is done, Mukherjee and Bansal met Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and senior BJP leader L.K. Advani in the Parliament House.

Bansal told reporters that they told the opposition leaders that important bills were pending and sought their cooperation. He, however, denied allegations of any 'deal' between the government and the opposition.

"We requested them that we should have government business, which is the duty of everybody in the house and any discussion that they would want on any subject under the appropriate rules would be taken up," Bansal told reporters.

"We requested them, sought their cooperation, and they assured us of that because there is lot of government business is pending which has piled up on the house," he said.

The minister denied the allegation of Left parties that there was a deal between the government and the opposition.

"This is a totally baseless allegation," Bansal said. "We talk to all parties, we also talked to Left parties when the debate on price rise was to take place."