Didi beware!

A record of sorts will be set when Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee present their respective Budgets in July. After a quarter century, two ministers from West Bengal will be presenting the General and Railway Budgets in Parliament. In 1983 and 1984, A B A Gani Khan Chowdhury presented the Railway Budget while Mukherjee, then Finance Minister in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet, presented the Union Budget. It is an encore for both Mukherjee and Banerjee — she presented a railway budget in 2000 when she was part of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Cabinet — although much has changed in their careers. Twenty-five years ago, both the ministers belonged to the Congress. Mukherjee is a veteran Congressman while Banerjee heads the Trinamool Congress. Rail Budgets usually get Banerjee worked up, and part of the folklore surrounding the tempestuous Trinamool leader is that she threw her shawl at then railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan for ignoring West Bengal in his Budget. That was in February 1997. Here’s hoping that nothing will be flung at the lady.