Bjp, Trinamool Ties On The Rocks
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition continued to be rocked by internecine strife yesterday on various fronts, but an aide to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asserted that the government was confident of presenting the next Union budget amid the crossfire.
The alliance between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP seemed to be on the rocks in West Bengal, even as the latest salvo within the government was fired by three AIADMK ministers yesterday. They wanted Vajpayee to tell commerce minister R K Hegde to shut up or get out.
Rejecting Hegdes suggestion that the coalition seek a fresh mandate than give in to the demands of AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha, law minister Thambi Durai, R Janarthanan and R K Kumar in a joint statement termed Hegdes criticism as totally uncalled for, unwarranted, unjustified and unethical, particularly in the context of the decision to call a meeting of the coordination committee.
The committee itself became a bone of contention, as some leaders asked privately how the BJP had been authorised to form such a committee.
Planning Commission deputy chairman Jaswant Singh, who is slated to be the committees convenor, was forced to put off the meeting he had earlier convened on Sunday and Monday and to initiate an exchange of letters with the coalition partners.
The BJP-Trinamool Congress alliance in West Bengal tottered over seat adjustments for the forthcoming panchayat elections, as the former sought the intervention of BJP chief L K Advani to sort out the misunderstanding. Trinamool chief Mamata Bannerjee had openly criticised state BJP leaders on Wednesday and said her party would field candidates for all the 58,460 seats in the three-tier panchayat polls.
Meanwhile, the Samata Party, another coalition partner, stepped up its oblique objections to the creation of a separate tribal state in south Bihar. It threatened to agitate if a special package was not announced to first improve industrial and infrastructural facilities in north and central Bihar.