The Trinamul Congress has 19 members in the Lok Sabha, but at least 50 MPs are needed to move a motion aimed at bringing down the government
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress has taken a bold decision to move a no-confidence motion on the opening day of the Winter Session of Parliament later this week.
The party has 19 members in the Lok Sabha, but at least 50 MPs are needed to move a motion aimed at bringing down the government. The mercurial West Bengal leader has not disclosed where she expects the remaining numbers to come from. So far her party has only made a broad appeal to the Left parties and the BJP to back her move. If this is to be taken at face value, the whole thing looks quite extraordinary. Careful political preparation has preceded the moving of any no-confidence motion in the past.
Ms Banerjee left the UPA-2 government only a few months ago. She stuck with the Manmohan Singh government through thick and thin, from the time corruption charges at the national level began to swirl, starting with the Commonwealth Games and through the 2G spectrum allocation affair. She has had no difficulty with the broad direction of national policy pursued by the Congress-led government, though she did raise her voice quite strongly on certain issues. After throwing a tantrum, she even supported Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature for President as late as July this year. In the event, the wholesale condemnation of the government at the initiative of the Trinamul Congress, as would be reflected in the moving of the no-confidence motion, looks short on credibility.
Ms Banerjee left the ruling coalition on the specific issue of foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail. Unlike, say, the Left, she is not opposed to FDI in general. It would have been in the fitness of things if her party had chosen to move a motion against the government policy on FDI in broad spectrum consumer goods. But in this she was beaten to the punch by the Left parties. She didn’t move quick enough to be the first party to move an anti-FDI resolution in the House.
Perhaps this shows her mind was made up on venting her spleen against the government she left when it disregarded her opinion on sector-specific FDI, and that moving the no-confidence motion was pre-programmed in her post-Congress politics. Maybe this was done in order to establish her as no less an anti-Congress political animal than others occupying the Opposition space. But this is hardly responsible politics when there’s only over a year to go for the general election anyway. Holding premature polls is likely to add to the already worrying inflationary pressures and further unsettling the polity, making it more difficult to retrieve ground in the system as a whole.
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