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Mamata's flip-flops over joining govt rile Trinamul MPs

Arup Chanda in Calcutta

All is not well for the fiery Trinamul Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee. Fissures are already evident within her two-and-half-year-old party of which she is the founder member.

The issue: To join or not to join the Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre.

While the stormy petrel of West Bengal politics is in two minds and at times contradicts herself on this issue, a majority of her party MPs are in favour of joining the ministry. Four of the seven Trinamul parliamentarians from West Bengal, including Mamata, had earlier held electoral offices. Mamata herself was a minister in the P V Narasimha Rao ministry till she publicly announced her resignation in early 1993 at a public rally in Calcutta.

However, Trinamul Congress MP, Ajit Panja, who is a strong proponent of joining the BJP ministry, had been a minister in many successive Congress governments. As such, Panja knows the fruits of office.

After meeting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Delhi, Panja valiantly announced that Trinamul was all set to join the Union ministry. In fact, he had been arguing for a long time in favour of joining the ministry. "Unless you are a minister you cannot access requisite files and no bureaucrat pays any heed to you. As a mere MP it does not matter how much you shout in Parliament or at the committee meetings. For the sake of Bengal's development we should join the ministry," he said recently in Calcutta.

But then, his leader is cut up with Panja. Mamata made it clear that Trinamul will join the ministry only if it is given the "right portfolio for the implementation of the Bengal package". Most of the projects in the "Bengal package" relate to the railways.

Mamata said so far her party had not received any concrete response from the prime minister that would prompt it to join the government and she also denied having sent any list of nominees to Vajpayee through Panja.

Asked about Panja's statements in Delhi, Mamata said, "He has just come back from Delhi after inviting the prime minister to attend the Brigade Parade rally. He has expressed his views as a senior leader, but a decision will be taken only after a meeting of the working committee."

The fact is Panja did take a list of nominees and ministries the Trinamul wanted. And both Panja and Vajpayee discussed the issue. It was following their meeting that the prime minister announced in Baroda that he had received a green signal from the Trinamul and was in possession of the list of ministries the party wanted. The question here is: Why should the PM as well as Panja lie unnecessarily?

For this one needs to go back a few years and trace Mamata's rise to fame. After having failed twice to become president of West Bengal Congress and experiencing a humiliating defeat in organisational elections within the state Congress, she formed the Trinamul Congress in August 1997 while the plenary session of the AICC was being held in Calcutta.

She entered into an electoral pact with the BJP and to the surprise of many bagged as much as seven Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal while the Congress could win only one. She began projecting her party as the "real Congress in West Bengal which is opposing the Marxists while the state Congress was a shadow of the CPI-M".

Following such an impressive performance, both Vajpayee and Union Home Minister L K Advani repeatedly requested Mamata to join the Union ministry. The situation then was so precarious for the BJP that if she wanted the railway ministry, it would have been offered on a platter to her.

But she refused because she was not sure whether the Vajpayee ministry would last long. Instead, she projected herself as a nun who has sacrificed the luxuries of office in the "interest of Bengal".

In fact, those in Trinamul who are in favour of joining the ministry point out that it would be practically impossible for the BJP to snatch the railways portfolio from its closest ally, the Samata Party.

The reality is that Mamata does not want any of her party MPs to be ministers. The two contenders are Panja and Sudip Bandopadhyay. They are willing to accept any berth. But not Mamata. Her eyes are set only on railways and she wants to be the sole member of her party in the Cabinet.

There is no doubt that railways is an important ministry but she is in no position to explain how she can overnight change the economic face of West Bengal by becoming railway minister. Thus, one can conclude that her real intentions are different. Going by the experience of former Union railway minister, A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet, she knows the power she will enjoy. She intends to throw largesse to her supporters and become a legend in the state.

So much so that at a workers convention in Calcutta she was not able to spell out her party's political line vis-à-vis the BJP. Her workers logically argued that the ruling Marxists as well as the Congress clubbed the party with the BJP and they are always at the receiving end. So, why not join the ministry and enjoy power? But devoid of a definite and well-defined political thought, Mamata had no answer except to mumble about "Bengal package".

With the bone of contention within the Trinamul Congress being joining the ministry, one would not be surprised if Mamata now threatens to withdraw support unless she is made railway minister. But then, it is to be seen how many of her MPs will back her on this issue.

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