Mamata Banerjee is not going to take the hike in fuel prices lying down.
She has called an emergency meeting of the Trinamool Congress parliamentary party in Kolkata on Friday to decide its future course - whether to continue in the Congress-led UPA Cabinet.
According to sources, the Trinamool supremo has already hardened her stance.
"Mamata Banerjee is extremely displeased over the hike in petroleum prices. This is not the first time that the Union government took such a decision keeping the UPA partners in the dark," said Trinamool Congress chief whip in Parliament and Union MoS for health Sudip Bandyopadhyay.
The hike in petroleum prices has aggravated the rising discontent in Trinamool, often described as the first UPA ally by Union finance minister and Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee.
Mamata's displeasure on the hike in petroleum prices is being seen as a manifestation of a grouse building up for quite some time since the Congress-led UPA stopped short of bailing out the cash-starved Bengal government as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had promised.
Even if Mamata was given priority to explain the state's poor financial condition left behind by the Left Front government in the National Development Council meeting in New Delhi, funds have not started coming when she wants it badly.
The Trinamool chief thus wants to put pressure on the UPA government to extract the goodies that she has to deliver to the people in the villages before the panchayat polls, likely to be held by the end of 2012.
The fiery Trinamool chief has already held a meeting with the state officials starting from the district magistrates to the block development officers on Thursday to rejig the delivery mechanism.
No comments:
Post a Comment