Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Saturday evening, shortly after his return from the G-20 summit in Cannes. The meeting took place against the backdrop of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's threat to pull out her Trinamool Congress from the United Progressive Alliance government over the issue of petrol price hike.
The meeting came also in the wake of the Congress doing a volte face on the hike: on Friday, the party indicated that it would pressure the government to roll back the prices; on Saturday, providing the economic logic for the hike, it endorsed the Prime Minister's comment at a press conference on Friday in Cannes, where he had justified the increase in petrol prices and even said there should be further movement towards deregulation of fuel prices.
Now the Congress said it had not demanded any rollback and said it left it to the government to decide on the hike, saying it did not want to enter into the latter's jurisdiction. “There is need to understand the issue in the right perspective. We never told the government what it should do and what policies it should make, “ party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, adding, “We have only said that keeping in mind the sensitivity of the issue, the government should do whatever it can to provide relief to the common man.”
Endorsing the Prime Minister's statement, he said there was nothing wrong in Dr. Singh supporting deregulation of prices for all petroleum products. Mr. Singhvi said removing the administered price mechanism was also for the public good. If petrol subsidies continued, people would still bear the economic brunt as they would have to pay additional taxes to make up the budget deficit. Having said that, Mr Singhvi, added the unhappiness of the allies on the issue would have to be addressed at a meeting with their leaders.
Meanwhile, in Kolkata, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee struck a conciliatory note, saying it was “perfectly legitimate” for any ally to voice concern on such a subject, while expressing confidence that the fuel hike issue would be sorted out soon with the allies, after they met the Prime Minister.
