West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's outburst on Saturday, challenging the Congress to pull out of her government, was taken with equanimity by its national leadership.
Disagreements between coalition partners were to be expected, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said here, stressing that all problems would be solved through discussion. While “there is no question of a 125-year-old party being scared of anyone,” the Congress had no plans to pull out in the State.
But despite the verbal restraint, the Congress is aware it will have to do a fine balancing act in West Bengal over the next few years. At the Centre, the support of the Trinamool Congress's 19 MPs will be crucial till such time the Congress finds an alternative; in West Bengal, on the other hand, the party cannot crush the ambitions of its State unit to replace the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as the principal Opposition, especially as the Trinamool-Congress combine displaced the Left Front government after 34 years.
Different responses
Interestingly, the Congress' spokespersons have responded differently to issues on which the party clashed with the Trinamool, depending on whether they have national or State level significance. When the Trinamool torpedoed the Teesta Waters Accord, opposed the attempt to permit FDI in multibrand retail and, worse, changed its mind on the Lokpal Bill, the Congress adopted a conciliatory line, underscoring the need to keep the dialogue going between the two parties. But when Ms. Banerjee sought to rename Kolkata's Indira Bhavan after the Bengali revolutionary poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national leadership backed the State unit, just as it did when the latter hit the streets on the issue of paddy prices. “We can't curb the enthusiasm of our State cadres,” said a party functionary.
But as the war of words escalated, the Congress' national leadership has decided to lower the decibel level. So, a day after a Congress functionary, defending its State unit's protest on the paddy issue, said, “Our leader Sonia Gandhi has told us that we should raise our voices in all States, whether we are in power or not, if we need to protest on an issue,” Shakeel Ahmed, AICC general secretary in-charge of West Bengal, did a volte face in Kolkata: “Manas Bhunia (Congress) is a Cabinet Minister in the coalition government in Bengal. I would suggest that nobody should speak against the government to which he belongs. After all, we are alliance partners in the government and any criticism of it would show all of us in a poor light.”
But even as the Congress will have to walk the high wire, there is a clear understanding, party sources said, that it would have to engage politically — and seriously — with Ms. Banerjee in the run-up to the budget session of Parliament to avoid any glitches. Secondly, the Congress will need the support of all it allies to get its candidate through the presidential elections later this year. Meanwhile, the results of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections will help the Congress figure out whether it needs the Trinamool as much as it does today. For the moment, however, a party functionary admitted, “She has greater leverage over us than we have over her.”
Asked whether the Trinamool itself would pull out of the United Progressive Alliance to bolster its separate identity, a Union Minister said: “If Mamata feels it would precipitate a general election, she might pull out as it would give her the opportunity to increase her party's representation in the Lok Sabha; but if she feels we can muster support elsewhere, she won't do it.”
Ms. Banerjee feels, sources say, that as she is still enjoying her honeymoon, a general election will help her more now than in 2014, by which time the glow might fade. Indeed, this is also the reason why she is thinking of advancing the panchayat polls scheduled for 2013.
