NEW DELHI, 14 August — The Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee yesterday quit India’s ruling coalition for the second time in two years, but kept alive a tenuous link that could see it returning to its fold again.
Mamata’s party, which has 10 MPs in Parliament, snapped its links with the multiparty combine to protest the government’s refusal to undo the bifurcation of the Eastern Railway zone between Bihar and West Bengal. After a meeting of its working committee here, Mamata told reporters that her party would not rejoin Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s coalition until the rail row was sorted out and the government acceded to its demands. When asked about the participation of the senior Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader, Shibu Soren in the meeting, Mamata said that Soren too favored her stand that there should be no bifurcation of Eastern Railway.
The Trinamool Congress wants key profit-making divisions of Eastern Railway (ER) that have been transferred to the newly created East Central Railway, back to the Calcutta-based ER. “Until and unless the railway bifurcation issue is sorted out, we are not a part and parcel of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA),” Mamata said.
But she said she was unhappy to have taken the decision and would like to work out the problem with the government.
“We don’t want to leave the (coalition). But we gave them 12 days time to grant our demands and no one was willing to even talk to us. We don’t feel like we matter — one does feel sad,” said Mamata.
“Coalition politics does not run like this. Whether a party is big or small, it should be heard. My party may not matter in New Delhi, but it matters in West Bengal where we are the (main) opposition.” Mamata said she would meet Vajpayee this week and hinted that she was keeping her options open and could reconsider her walkout.
One party MP said, that the party’s proposed meeting with Vajpayee on Aug. 16 or 17 was a last-ditch attempt by its leadership to solve out the issue. Reacting to the decision, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) indicated its leadership would try to coax Mamata back into its embrace with a compromise formula.
