At least three UPA constituents — the Trinamul Congress, the DMK and the NCP — are unhappy with the Congress for different reasons.
The Trinamul Congress fears that the Congress will try to split the party by drawing attention to how the top Congress ministers backed former Union minister Dinesh Trivedi.
Trinamul chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee recently said in New Delhi, “If there is humiliation you have to take a decision.”
She was said to have told her party MPs that the Congress would not set up a coordination committee in the UPA despite the persistent demand. “If they (the Congress) have delayed it for three years in the UPA-2, why would they do it now?”
The Congress is uncomfortable with the DMK even before the spectrum scam came to the fore. Its leaders hold the DMK responsible for the party’s debacle in the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls. The DMK is not keen on deputing its MPs for the two Cabinet-rank ministries kept vacant after the resignation of A. Raja and Dayanidhi Maran.
The Congress leaders had held NCP chief and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar responsible for the price rise when he was handling the consumer affairs, food and public distribution ministry. They had even criticised him the CWC meeting.
The line of “coalition compulsions” is virtually putting the Congress allies in the UPA in the dock.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement in the Lok Sabha, that “the difficult decisions that we have to take are made more difficult by the fact that we are a coalition government and we have to evolve policy keeping in mind the need to maintain a consensus,” has caused “pain and unease” to Mr Pawar. “There is not even a single instance where we (NCP) have caused any hindrance (for the government). Making such a sweeping statement has caused anguish and unease for us,” he said.
But the Congress on Tuesday night soft-pedalled Mr Pawar’s remarks. “We have treated all our allies with extreme sensitivity and with utmost courtesy,” party spokesman Manish Tewari said, adding that in a coalition arrangement, every political party does not come from the same political understanding. “So, therefore, at times there is a divergence within the coalition with regard to your understanding on a particular issue. But that divergence essentially does not mean disconsonance in the coalition,” he said.