By Naresh Kumar Sharma
NEW DELHI: As the Manmohan Singh led UPA government at centre commemorates its three years of completion, it woudl have to contend with the absence of Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would not be attending the dinner much to the embarrassment of Congress.
The skipping of dinner by Mamata hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to mark the occasion has take sheen off from the UPA celebrations to significant extent.
Sources said that Mamata has not been happy with the centre pertaining to here demand made to the centre government for debt streamlining. West Bengal Chief Minster Mamata has been asking centre to bail her out of the debt-stressed situation.
Besides this, Mamata had been opposed to the proposal of centre for setting-up National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) to combat terrorisms as West Bengal Chief Minister believes trhat NCTC was against the basic tenets of feudalism and would eat into the powers of the state. She has also opposed digitization of broadcast and FDI in retail sector.
The temperamental chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee had also had skipped the first anniversary dinner after separating from Congress for the state civic polls in 2010, when she was Railway minister.
Again in 2011, the UPA’s second celebratory dinner in 2011, Mamata did not turn-up Trinamool Congress was represented by Mukul Roy, the current Union Railways Minister.
Sources in Congress said that party had tried to persuade Mamata for attending the dinner especially due to the fact it badly needs her (Mamata) support for the presidential elections.Meanwhile another ally,the DMK's M Karunanidhi, will also not attend the dinner citing his poor health.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi was expected to attend the dinner. The UPA leadership has accorded invitation to all political parties forming part of UPA, and also to those parties giving outside support for the dinner being hosted to celebrate the third anniversary of UPA.
The UPA government in its second term was being dogged by issues of corruption, flow of black money and price-rise. The UPA government is being seen as lacking political will to tackle the issues of black money, corruption and price rise.
Especially the issue of rising prices has made life of common man very difficult and in view of this, centre needs to find a way and formula to arrest the increase in prices of essential commodities including food-grain items and vegetables.
With two years to go for general elections, it is time for Congress-led UPA to take stock of the situation and restore its waning credibility by taking certain tough decisions.
