Trinamool leaders fear cross-voting

KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress state ministers kept up their tough posturing on Saturday, even after the Presidential poll gambit failed, but there were worried voices in the camp. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee hopped on Facebook in a damage control exercise, but for all her arguments, she had no answers to the key poser – how will Trinamool explain why they tried to stop a Bengali from becoming President?

The party tried to reason that Trinamool is not opposed to Pranab, but is against the idea of a hard-core politician contesting for an apolitical post, but the plea was drowned out by the euphoria across Bengal at Pranab’s candidature.

Senior party leaders are now worried about the day after tomorrow. What about their future in UPA? An MP said there was no question of Trinamool walking out of the alliance on its own, and ‘hoped’ that it wasn’t in the Congress’ interest to do so either.

But what has dogged them ever since Mulayam Singh Yadav endorsed Pranab is whether Trinamool will abstain from voting or vote against Pranab.

One of Mamata’s senior ministers and an MP the day before said that they feared cross-voting. “Who will know who votes for whom? Pranab Mukherjee enjoys an excellent personal rapport with several MPs. If it comes to voting, the outcome would be too tough to predict,” said the minister on Saturday.

Mamata is scheduled to address her party legislators and MPs in Town Hall on Monday, where she is expected to touch upon these issues.

The party supremo’s over-reliance on two leaders (one within the party fold; the other outside) new to national politics while completely ignoring seasoned politicians in Trinamool ranks, most felt, has pushed Trinamool to a point-of-no-return. “Though it may seem as a sudden development, it was first the Samajwadi Party who’d entered into deliberations with Mamata Banerjee, sending former Bengal minister (and a Left Front partner) Kiranmoy Nanda to explore common ground immediately after winning UP elections in March, this year. This, months before the recent developments,” said a party MLA. In this a newly elected Trinamool MP played a key role to build bridges.

Nanda, a Left Front minister for 29 years, had even said after meeting Mamata that the relationship of Trinamool and Samajwadi Party will play a crucial role in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. A Trinamool leader argued, “For anyone, it is apparent that the political considerations in UP and Bengal are very different. In UP, Mulayam would be averse to straining his relations with Congress to the extent that BSP starts courting it. They have a mere three per cent vote share difference. Even now, BSP and SP are trying to outdo each other in supporting Congress on key legislations. Only our leaders deliberating in Delhi on this issue chose to turn a blind eye.” The leader added, “Now it pans out that Mulayam had used Mamata to come closer to the Congress. None should be surprised if Trinamool is now shown the door from UPA-2 and Ram Gopal Yadav, replaces Mukul Roy as the next railway minister.”

“This is a complete loss of face,” another MP indicated. “While we understand the nomination of APJ Abdul Kalam and Somnath Chatterjee, the reason for naming Manmohan Singh still beats us. Initially, Didi had suggested two other names apart from Kalam, Meira Kumar and Gopal Krishna Gandhi. Why were these suddenly dropped? By naming the Prime Minister, we really ended up forcing even those opposed to Pranab Mukherjee within Congress to coalesce behind him leading to his declaration as the UPA candidate. It is either voting with the UPA or abstaining for Kalam himself is unlikely to contest,” this MP believed. But will the UPA which had gone ahead with it’s meeting to nominate Pranab without Mamata, be willing to win her back again?