West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said her party may have to take some hard decisions at its meeting on Tuesday if there is no rollback of the measures announced by the Centre in the last few days — hike in diesel price, a cap on supply of domestic LPG cylinders and the decision to allow FDI in multibrand retail.
“The battle will go on as we are committed to the people,” the Trinamool Congress leader said.
In a democratic set-up, reforms must reach the poor and the common people. Reforms did not mean selling out everything to satisfy some sections, she said on Saturday, reaching out to people through the social networking platform and also by hitting the streets — for the second time this year against the Centre’s decisions.
Addressing a gathering after a two-km protest march here, Ms. Banerjee said she believed in the stability of government (at the Centre) and had put up with decisions imposed on her party. “They do as they please ... Am I supposed to be a mute spectator?” she asked, adding the Centre had to share the concerns of allies.
“We don’t want government to fall, so we tolerate a lot of things,” she said, adding the decisions made since Thursday dealt a huge blow to the people in one fell swoop.
Dismissing the option given by the Centre on FDI in multibrand retail — it is for the State governments to decide whether or not to allow FDI funded stores — Ms. Banerjee said no one was fool enough to believe that there could be alternative approaches to a single policy.
Demanding that people be given at least 24 subsided LPG cylinders (against the cap of six announced by the Centre) Ms. Banerjee said the States, and not the Centre, generated the revenues for funding subsidies.
Earlier, at the Secretariat, she responded to reporters’ queries saying, “They [the Centre, with the LPG policy] have set kitchens on fire.”
