Mamata sees red at Pranab's Left turn

In the turf war between the battered CPI(M) and its arch rival, Trinamool Congress, veteran Congressman and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has found a new place of prominence.

Mukherjee has been invited by the comrades to cut the red ribbon and inaugurate a host of programmes of the West Bengal government, ranging from a seminar of panchayat bodies to laying the foundation stone of irrigation projects. Apart from being a Union minister, Mukherjee is the president of the state Congress unit.

Mukherjee’s aides told Business Standard that almost 20 invitation letters from the state government for different programmes were pending his approval. These are for the month of January and February, when Mukherjee will be busy in Delhi, preparing his General Budget.

It is not as if the CPI(M) has suddenly discovered the importance of Mukherjee. Its purpose is different: to ‘irritate’ Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

In a stark contrast to Mukherjee, Banerjee doesn’t share the dais with any CPI(M) leader. Her party leaders, including the six Ministers of State in the UPA government, also boycott programmes that are attended by Left leaders.

But Mukherjee, a veteran of ‘divide and rule’ politics in West Bengal, is now becoming cautious. He is becoming more choosy about the programmes he agrees to attend. Last week, he cancelled a programme of West Bengal Panchayat Minister Anisur Rehman at the last moment even though he had initially given his consent. The senior Congress leader has also not given his consent to an invitation from J K Ghosh, an aide of former chief minister Jyoti Basu, seeking his presence to inaugurate a ‘fair’.

Mukherjee has told his friends that every time he is seen along with the CPI(M) leaders, Mamata Banerjee flies into a rage. According to a key aide of the railway minister, she sees this as an attempt by the Left to create a rift in the Congress-Trinamool alliance in West Bengal.

Banerjee had stopped talking to Mukherjee for almost two months after the Congress took the support of the CPI(M) to form a Municipal Corporation Board, shunning its alliance partner.

Banerjee has also complained to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her political secretary Ahmed Patel that a section of the leadership continues to maintain a good rapport with the Left and not very keen to see the Opposition oust the comrades from power.

In the CPI(M), while party general secretary Prakash Karat and his supporters continue to follow the “defeat BJP, reject Congress” policy, the Bengal lobby feels that it needs to create a division between the Trinamool and the Congress ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in 2011.