The Congress core group went into a huddle on Friday evening to discuss how it could mitigate the impact of the petrol price hike and assuage the feelings of its allies, the Trinamool Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on the proposed cutback on the supply of subsidised LPG.
With not just the Opposition, but its allies too criticising the petrol price hike, the Congress core group, which met at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's residence, informed sources said, felt that the Congress-ruled State governments could be asked to think of measures such as cutting the VAT and sales tax to offset the petrol price hike.
As for LPG, it was felt that the Pranab Mukherjee-led Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) was the most suitable forum for discussing the matter again with the object of “taking the allies into confidence” before taking any further decision.
Apart from the Prime Minister, others who attended the core group meeting included Mr. Mukherjee, Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Congress president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel. A special invitee was Law Minister Salman Khurshid as progress on the Lokpal Bill was on the agenda as were the recommendations of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on corruption. He has suggested a series of measures to tackle corruption, including ending the discretionary powers of Ministers and fast tracking of CBI cases against civil servants accused of malpractices.
Ms. Gandhi, however, did not attend the meeting as she was asked by doctors to restrict her activities and return to normal work gradually.
On Thursday, she presided over a meeting of the party's Central Election Committee at 10, Janpath.
Meanwhile, speculation was rife that Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi attended the Friday meeting as he was seen arriving at 7, Race Course Road shortly before the meeting was to commence. It then turned out that he came for a one-on-one meeting with the Prime Minister and left before the core group's deliberations began.
The Friday meeting is significant as next week both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister will be away in the U.S. for about a week, overlapping for the greater part — while Dr. Singh will be attending a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Mukherjee has a series of high-level financial meetings lined up. So the core group is unlikely to meet next Friday in their absence.
