Mamata gives Cabinet meeting a miss

Forty-eight hours after her party fought a triangular battle against the Left and the Congress in the West Bengal civic polls, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee skipped the Union Cabinet meeting, despite being in Delhi.

This is the first time in the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government that a minister has deliberately not attended a Cabinet meeting. During the first UPA government, the then chemicals and fertiliser minister, Ramvilas Paswan, did not attend the Cabinet meeting that was to decide on imposition of President’s rule in Bihar.

Banerjee, however, didn’t want to read much into her action. She said, as the Cabinet was scheduled to meet for some “simple issue not relating to my ministry”, she chose to skip the meeting and work in the office, instead.

Today’s Cabinet meeting had only one agenda: To decide on the imposition of President’s rule in Jharkhand.

Banerjee had spent almost a month away from Delhi as she was busy campaigning in West Bengal for municipal polls.

She came back to Delhi last night. Banerjee was, however, present in a meeting of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with top ministers and UPA leaders in the evening, before the presentation of UPA government’s report card.

CPI(M), as was expected, slammed Banerjee for her absence from the Cabinet meeting. Its politburo member, Sitaram Yechury, told reporters that Banerjee had defied the collective responsibility of the Cabinet. “A few days back, the prime minister had said that during the past few years, Cabinet meetings were held almost every week and that so many Cabinet meetings had never been held by earlier governments. But the railway minister has to answer why she decides not to attend them. And the prime minister will also have to answer how he will live with this contradiction in his Cabinet?”