By Sanjiv Acharya
UPA allies are giving the Congress and the Prime Minister a rough time. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee was never an easy woman to do business with. It is still not clear whether her party will support the proposed Women’s Reservation Bill or will join hands with the Opposition for a demand of quota within quota. According to the sources in Trinamool Mamata Banerjee is upset with Pranab Mukherjee. Without naming him, she recently told reporters in Kolkata that some senior Congress leaders are intentionally trying to hurt her party. She felt Pranab Mukherjee was trying to broker a deal with Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party to replace Trinamool in the UPA. This followed Mulayam Singh’s party to support the nuclear liability bill in the Lok Sabha. But soon her doubts were cleared when she heard that Mulayam was unhappy with the UPA government because bill was not referred to the committee headed by Mulayam, but instead sent to the parliamentary committee on science and technology headed by Congress MP Subirami Reddy. Mamata seemed to have been pacified for the time but then one is not sure where one stands with the maverick Mamata. Congress’ other ally, the Dravid Munetra Kazagham (DMK) is rife with internal problems. One of the party’s ministers in the Union Cabinet MK Alagiri seems to be a “visiting faculty” minister. He spends more time away than in Delhi. When the government was facing heat during the Budget session, Alagiri was far away in the cooler climes of Maldives enjoying a holiday with family and friends. In the first six months of him being sworn in, the minister took 61 domestic flights to and from Chennai and Madurai. The minister undertook 61 domestic and six international flights between May 29 and December 1, 2009 at a total cost of Rs 14.5 lakh, according to the response to an RTI applicant. He is again on a holiday trip to the United States of America along with family and friends.
Apart from these two, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is also not lagging behind in creating problems for the government. Agriculture and food Minister Sharad Pawar has been criticized by the entire Opposition on prices. The main allegation against him is that he gives more time to cricket than to his ministry. The Congress at one point was wanting to bifurcate his huge ministry into three but could not do it. Recently, his second in command, Praful Patel has also come under fire on the ongoing IPL controversy. The Civil Aviation Minister has still to clarify his daughter’s unwanted interference in his ministry and allegations of having favoured the father-in-law of his elder daughter in granting a private airport project near Kolkata. The Congress high command is now seriously considering appointing a senior leader of the Congress as coordinator of UPA. It’s time the UPA reflected some harmony.