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West Bengal : Mamata undecided on NDA |
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The Trinamul leader, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, is still undecided on whether to return to the Vajpayee Government. It is learnt that the Samata leadership may drop its reservations about her re-entry after she made peace with George Fernandes. She had left the NDA government on the issue of charges against the former Defence Minister after the Tehelka expose. But she appears to have been caught between the two contrary pulls within her own party. It is understood that five of her party’s nine MPs want her to rejoin the NDA, but most of her 60 newly elected Trinamul Congress MLAs would like to wait and see how the NDA fares in the coming Uttar Pradesh poll. The West Bengal unit of the BJP has, meanwhile, threatened to resign en masse if the Prime Minister decides to take her back.
Observers feel that in case Ms. Banerjee decides to rejoin the NDA, her credibility and that of her party will be seriously eroded. But if she does not, then the party will be faced with a vertical split and four, if not five, of its members in the Lok Sabha will cast their lot with the NDA. It is significant that the Congress is also divided on the issue of inviting Ms. Banerjee and her followers to join the party. Some of them have a serious complaint against her failure to distance herself from the BJP.
They, therefore, are wary of having her as the Trinamul leader in the state for that would permanently deprive the party of the support of the minorities. Yet the Congress president, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, is reportedly quite keen that Ms. Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress come back home. This is part of her larger design to get the Tamil Maanila Congress led by G.K. Moopanar and other similar groups of ex-Congressmen to rejoin the party in a grand consolidation.
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