Trivedi dials Didi, quits rail ministry

The suspense over the status of Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi ended on Sunday after he spoke to Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the phone and resigned soon after.

The party has named Mukul Roy as his successor and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee made it clear that in a coalition, the Prime Minister had compulsions that overrode the administrative ability of ministers.

Roy may take oath in the next two days, and his first job will be to defend the Railway Budget in Parliament, the debate and passage of which has been put off by two days.

He is likely to announce he will partially roll back provisions of the Budget tabled by his predecessor. While Trivedi is a qualified pilot, Roy does not have a graduation degree.

The incident shows how, in the face of the setback in the recent Assembly elections, the Congress has become even more a plaything of its allies, vulnerable to their bullying.

However, now that Trivedi’s resignation has been secured, the Trinamool Congress (which has called the Union Budget ‘tolerable’) will vote with the government on the Budget and will not go with the Bharatiya Janata Party when it raises the issue of the National Count Terrorism Centre on the floor of the House, thus batting for the government on the crucial issue.

Banerjee is not going to let the government off easily. She arrived in Delhi late tonight and will meet the Prime Minister tomorrow to demand a three-year moratorium on interest payments by the West Bengal government. Her party expected the announcement in the Budget but it was not made.