'Didi' gives Manmohan Singh another big bang

Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the second biggest constituent of the UPA-II with 19 members in the Lok Sabha, withdrew its support to the central government on Tuesday night.

Citing the FDI in retail, the diesel price hike and the LPG cap, Banerjee said she or her party could not be a part of an anti-people government.

The Trinamool chief, however, left room for speculation that she might rethink if the central government accepted her demands when she said her party MPs would resign from their posts on Friday afternoon.

The Congress has three days to work out a compromise formula, political experts said. 

Banerjee wants the Centre to withdraw the proposal to allow FDI (foreign direct investment) in retail, a rollback of Rs3-4 on diesel price, and scrap the LPG cap. She wants the government to allow people to have at least 12, and not six, cylinders in a year.

“Let them [the government] say, ‘yes we want to give you 24 cylinders instead of 6’,” Banerjee said after a three-hour marathon meeting with her party MPs in Kolkata.

Subsidies, she said, are necessary in a country like India, which does not have a social security policy. She also accused the Centre of using diversionary tactics by announcing these reforms at a time when it is besieged by the coal block allocation scam.

Banerjee said though Trinamool was a major ally of the Congress at the Centre, Congress leaders never showed her or her party any respect.

“We were never consulted,” she said. “We are sorry to take this decision, but we can’t help it. We will oppose all anti-people steps of the government. I tried my best to convince Sonia Gandhi and prime minister Manmohan Singh; but they did not heed my demands.”

She, however, did not specify if the government would collapse resulting in mid-term polls. “How can I predict whether this government will last for three or six months. I am not bothered either.”

The Congress maintained that Trinamool was still an ally. “The issues raised by Banerjee will be discussed with the government,” Janardan Dwivedi, Congress general secretary, said.