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Mamata on the horns of a dilemma

Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has been left fuming after the Union Cabinet decided on Thursday to ignore her demand for a rollback in the price hike of petroleum products. Questioned about it, her caveat to reporters was 'wait and watch'.

Although Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan maintained that the Union Cabinet meeting on Thursday did not discuss the petroleum price hike issue at all, Mamata contradicted him.

She told a group of reporters at the party office in New Delhi that she had raised the issue. However, Mahajan and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had told her to exercise patience since the issue was a complex one, which demanded more time to be resolved, she said.

"Thereafter, I showed them (Mahajan and Singh) the letter Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had written to me before he underwent knee Surgery. It said he would review my demand for the rollback of the price hike. This elicited only silence from the trio," Mamata revealed.

Asked whether she would resign as railway minister, she shot back, "Do you want me to resign?"

Asked about her party's strategy, she said, "Wait and watch." She declined to elaborate.

It was evident that the Trinamul chief was considerably upset.

"I can only say that the Trinamul's patience should not be tested repeatedly by senior leaders of the National Democratic Alliance government. We have already reiterated that our party too has political compulsions. It is high time the NDA leaders, especially those belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party, understood this," fumed Trinamul's chief whip in the Lok Sabha Sudip Bandopadhyay.

Trinamul workers told rediff.com that senior party leaders would meet on Thursday night to discuss the issue.

Senior BJP leaders, including party general secretary Narendra Modi, Union Petroleum Minister Ram Naik and Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, have put their foot down against any rollback stressing that international oil prices had escalated sharply all over the world without exception and that India could just not afford extravagant populist measures.

With the Trinamul demand for the rollback being virtually rejected by the Union Cabinet, Mamata is now on the horns of a pronounced dilemma.

Mamata had to eat a humble pie after she and senior party colleague Ajit Panja resigned from the Union Cabinet but withdrew their resignations when the prime minister promised to review the rollback issue.

According to political observers in New Delhi, Mamata has to hold her horses and resist the temptation to quit the NDA because the Trinamul's perceived alliance with the Congress in West Bengal is not all that reliable.

West Bengal Congress chief Pranab Mukherjee and chief whip in the Lok Sabha Priyaranjan Dasmunshi have a good personal equation with Mamata, but both have reiterated that as long as the Trinamul is part of the BJP-led alliance, the Congress would have nothing to do with it politically.

Added to Mamata's discomfiture is the fact that the Trinamul's walking out of the NDA would not affect the stability of the Vajpayee government. The NDA has 309 seats in the Lok Sabha with the Trinamul contributing just 10 seats. Vajpayee government needs just 272 seats in a House of 542.

However, Mamata can take comfort in the fact that veteran Marxist and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu has finally put in his papers after being the longest-serving chief minister of the country (upwards of 23 years). This will enable the Trinamul to give a good fight to the Left Front in the state.

Though the veiled threats by Trinamul leaders on the non-fulfilment of their demand on the rollback issue appear to be largely illusory in nature, Mamata's assertion to reporters to 'wait and watch' has left a tantalising suspense on what the Trinamul chief's game plan would be.

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