Mamata Banerjee good at staging revolts & seeking face-savers
No wonder then that her current threat to the UPA regime has not left the ruling or Opposition camps excited about her potential to make the government reverse the decision on FDI in retail or endanger the Manmohan Singh regime.
NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has often threatened to shake the political establishment, ever since she attained some stature in politics. Yet, for all her political brinkmanship, Banerjee's each such action - as BJP's ally in the NDA regime or as a UPA constituent - ended in a whimper. She never made any political capital but was forced to retrace her steps, with or without a face-saver. Most of the time, she ended up in the margins till she found another opening for political realignment.
No wonder then that her current threat to the UPA regime has not left the ruling or Opposition camps excited about her potential to make the government reverse the decision on FDI in retail or endanger theManmohan Singh regime. The limited curiosity is whether the government will gift her a face-saver (by partial rollback of diesel price/LPG restriction and Bengal package) or just leave her to fend for herself, like when she tried to ambush Pranab Mukherjee's presidential election, a couple of months ago.
"Mamata is back with her old tricks of issuing threats by striking, as usual, a populist posture. By now, people are too familiar with her ways. After failing to deliver as CM, she is now looking for ways to divert attention. I doubt her capacity even to rally her own MPs. The country needs FDI in retail and our leadership should stand firm on this issue," Congress MP and Banerjee's vocal critic, Deepa Dasmunsi, told ET. "Mamata tried and failed to blackmail the Congress high command during the presidential polls. Now she is trying the same trick, with the hope of getting some face-saver, as her party can't afford to function without the railways portfolio. Like the Left, Mamata too indulges in Congress-bashing and Centre-bashing to cover up her own failures," added WB Congress strongman Adhir Chowdary.
Banerjee played out her maiden 'national revolt' way back in the early 1990s, when as a rising Youth Congress leader and junior minister in the Narasimha Rao government, she demanded the dismissal of the Jyoti Basu regime, following a bloody clash between CPM and Youth Congress activists in Kolkata. While the question of sacking the Basu government was never in question, despite Banerjee sitting on a dharna in Kolkata, what enraged her was to see Rao's home minister, SB Chavan, meeting Basu, while on a fact-finding trip to Kolkata. Terming Chavan's conduct as a major political compromise, Banerjee quit her ministerial post. But Rao was only too happy to accept her resignation and sideline her during the rest of his tenure.
Banerjee next tried to cosy up to the post-Rao Congress establishment led by Sitaram Kesri, but ended up as a foot solider in the Sharad Pawar camp. After her humiliating defeat against Somen Mitra (now a TMC MP) in the PCC presidential election, she launched the Trinamool Congress, in the late 1990s, to fight Communists and 'Marxist agents within the state Congress'. She also claimed she had the 'silent endorsement' of Sonia Gandhi and profusely recollected how Rajiv Gandhi facilitated her political growth.
Though TMC easily outgrew the state Congress, her solo bids to defeat the Left repeatedly failed, prompting her to tie up with the BJP-led NDA, which made her the railway minister in the Vajpayee regime. Here too, she indulged in many acts of brinkmanship but failed most of the times. She once decided 'quit' when the Vajpayee regime raised the fuel prices, but soon resumed duties as a minister, without elaborating on her change of heart. But after the Tehelka expose, she quit as railway minister, when her demand for sacking then defence minister George Fernandes was rejected. Though rumblings within NDA forced Fernandes to resign, almost immediately after that, she remained in the wilderness, watching Nitish Kumar settling down as the new railway minister. Fernandes, meanwhile, returned as defence minister in a few months.
No wonder then that her current threat to the UPA regime has not left the ruling or Opposition camps excited about her potential to make the government reverse the decision on FDI in retail or endanger theManmohan Singh regime. The limited curiosity is whether the government will gift her a face-saver (by partial rollback of diesel price/LPG restriction and Bengal package) or just leave her to fend for herself, like when she tried to ambush Pranab Mukherjee's presidential election, a couple of months ago.
"Mamata is back with her old tricks of issuing threats by striking, as usual, a populist posture. By now, people are too familiar with her ways. After failing to deliver as CM, she is now looking for ways to divert attention. I doubt her capacity even to rally her own MPs. The country needs FDI in retail and our leadership should stand firm on this issue," Congress MP and Banerjee's vocal critic, Deepa Dasmunsi, told ET. "Mamata tried and failed to blackmail the Congress high command during the presidential polls. Now she is trying the same trick, with the hope of getting some face-saver, as her party can't afford to function without the railways portfolio. Like the Left, Mamata too indulges in Congress-bashing and Centre-bashing to cover up her own failures," added WB Congress strongman Adhir Chowdary.
Banerjee played out her maiden 'national revolt' way back in the early 1990s, when as a rising Youth Congress leader and junior minister in the Narasimha Rao government, she demanded the dismissal of the Jyoti Basu regime, following a bloody clash between CPM and Youth Congress activists in Kolkata. While the question of sacking the Basu government was never in question, despite Banerjee sitting on a dharna in Kolkata, what enraged her was to see Rao's home minister, SB Chavan, meeting Basu, while on a fact-finding trip to Kolkata. Terming Chavan's conduct as a major political compromise, Banerjee quit her ministerial post. But Rao was only too happy to accept her resignation and sideline her during the rest of his tenure.
Banerjee next tried to cosy up to the post-Rao Congress establishment led by Sitaram Kesri, but ended up as a foot solider in the Sharad Pawar camp. After her humiliating defeat against Somen Mitra (now a TMC MP) in the PCC presidential election, she launched the Trinamool Congress, in the late 1990s, to fight Communists and 'Marxist agents within the state Congress'. She also claimed she had the 'silent endorsement' of Sonia Gandhi and profusely recollected how Rajiv Gandhi facilitated her political growth.
Though TMC easily outgrew the state Congress, her solo bids to defeat the Left repeatedly failed, prompting her to tie up with the BJP-led NDA, which made her the railway minister in the Vajpayee regime. Here too, she indulged in many acts of brinkmanship but failed most of the times. She once decided 'quit' when the Vajpayee regime raised the fuel prices, but soon resumed duties as a minister, without elaborating on her change of heart. But after the Tehelka expose, she quit as railway minister, when her demand for sacking then defence minister George Fernandes was rejected. Though rumblings within NDA forced Fernandes to resign, almost immediately after that, she remained in the wilderness, watching Nitish Kumar settling down as the new railway minister. Fernandes, meanwhile, returned as defence minister in a few months.
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