If finance minister Pranab Mukherjee becomes the official presidential nominee of the UPA, Mamata Banerjee will ultimately have no option but to support him.
This is the decision, which the Trinamool Congress has arrived at after much deliberation on the subject.
It is not that Mukherjee’s being a native of West Bengal has worked in his favour. Banerjee does not want to be seen as one voting against a secular combination’s nominee.
But that does not mean in her meeting with Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday, Banerjee will immediately agree to the name the Congress proposes. Even if Mukherjee’s name is suggested, the Trinamool chief is unlikely to give her immediate approval.
She will ask for time because she needs to understand if the
Centre will reciprocate her positive gesture by giving her a good financial deal.
Before leaving Kolkata on Tuesday evening, she told reporters that the issue of a financial package for West Bengal is not linked to the presidential polls. The Congress has been saying the same thing for the past few days — that there is not any quid pro quo.
But the fact remains even if she doesn’t raise the issue during her meeting with Gandhi, she will discuss finances preferably with the prime minister if she gets an opportunity to meet him during her stay in Delhi.
Banerjee said that the several rounds of discussions, which were going on between her government and the Centre, were part of a “continuous process”.
She has said previously that she has been waiting for a long time for the Centre to gift a good financial deal to the state and hopes that the prime minister will understand her plight.
But it is imperative for the survival of the coalition that Banerjee supports the UPA candidate. In any case, the Congress has opened a simultaneous dialogue with the SP and has even touched base with the BSP.
Like Gandhi, Banerjee too is keeping her cards close to her chest for the time being though she knows that given the present political situation in the state and her dependence on the Muslim vote, she cannot vote against the nominee propped by a group of secular parties.
Nevertheless, she will use the Delhi trip to play her own political games and meet her “many friends in the capital”. Among those friends is the SP boss Mulayam Singh Yadav, who Banerjee believes shares her predicament. Both come from states badly in need of funds and both are secular parties. She wants to find out from Mulayam his opinion on the Congress nominee before casting her lot with the Congress.
