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Reshuffle fallout : Mamata out in the cold |
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Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee appears to have overplayed her hand once again. Re-entering the Union Cabinet with lot of hope, Mamata finds herself now as a Minister without portfolio.
The Prime Minister is reportedly in no mood to offer Mamata anything other than the Coal ministry. No matter what Mamata’s Trinamool MPs may hope for, Vajpayee and his deputy, L.K. Advani, are one on this. Realising this, the Trinamool chief called on Advani last week and also attended an RSS function. Having gone through an exercise to see who he could shift around, Vajpayee seems to have given up and Mamata may have to be content with being a minister without portfolio. At least till the time the PM returns from abroad.
Senior BJP leaders admit that the Cabinet expansion last week was a badly managed affair. It is hardly a secret that the re-entry of the Trinamool Congress chief had been held up over all these months due to differences over a portfolio for her. The PM convinced her to become a Minister without portfolio till he can come up with something. But effecting the musical chairs is proving to be more difficult than the PM had probably imagined.
Mamata is stuck in the Government this time. It is not going to be so easy for her to quit once again and BJP knows it too well.
Mamata’s problems with the Coal Ministry are two-fold. It does not have the public interface a politician like her would have liked. Besides the mafia control over the coal sector, she would have to contend with the unions many of which are controlled by the Left parties, a red rag to her.
There was a time when the BJP was prepared to give Mamata Ministry of Rural Development but she was not interested then. Today, she is interested in the Ministry but the BJP is not prepared to part with it. Her dream is to recapture the Railway Ministry but Nitish Kumar cannot be displaced, without hurting the Bihar lobby.
Vajpayee has the immediate problems of finding replacements for HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, who has sent in his resignation following his chargesheeting in the Babri demolition case.
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