Who’ll send Dinesh Trivedi off the rails?

On the night of the rail budget, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee had demanded railways minister Dinesh Trivedi’s ouster in a fax message sent to the prime minister.

A few days after, a new crisis has arisen. What will now be the manner in which Trivedi will be asked to quit office? More exactly, who will ask him to leave? 

According to highly placed Congress sources, prime minister Manmohan Singh is reluctant to ask for Trivedi’s resignation. He wants Trivedi’s party boss, Mamata Banerjee, to perform the unpleasant task and direct the railway minister to demit office.

Trivedi — unlike A Raja — has, after all, not come under a cloud of suspicion for any alleged wrongdoing. And it looks ethically unpleasant for the prime minister to throw a colleague out simply because of “unfair” coalition demands. What has also aggravated matters is Singh’s firm opposition to the elevation of Mukul Roy as a Cabinet minister.

In fact, Manmohan Singh’s reservations about inducting Mukul Roy into the highest echelons of the government are so strong that the government is checking Roy’s antecedents extremely carefully.

Apparently, the prime minister’s dislike for Mukul Roy dates back to almost a year ago when he attended a Cabinet meeting as minister of state for railways, soon after Mamata Banerjee was sworn in as West Bengal chief minister. At that meeting, Singh had asked him about his vision for the railways and Mukul Roy hadn’t been able to say anything in response. Roy had also angered the PM when he refused to visit an accident site despite being asked to do so by the PM’s office. 

For now, however, the PM has on his hands the unenviable task of axing his present railways minister. Sources say that Mamata is adamant that Singh take upon himself the responsibility of dropping Trivedi because, according to her, “a minister’s continuance in office is decided by none other than the prime minister”.

The real reason, though, for Mamata Banerjee not directing Trivedi to leave office is because she is afraid that evicting a defiant railway minister might snowball into her throwing him out from the party, in which case Trivedi would survive as an MP for the remaining two years of the Lok Sabha term without having to obey the party whip. He would enjoy the luxury of conducting himself as an unattached MP.

According to existing laws, an MP continues to remain an MP even if she or he is thrown out by the party. They retain their right to behave according to their own free will and thereby embarrass their former political bosses if they so choose.

If Trivedi can be made to lose his Cabinet berth without affecting his primary membership of the party, he has to obey party whip and discipline. In that case, even if he remains an MP he can do no harm. It comes as no surprise then that Trivedi is keenly aware of what is preventing Mamata from asking him to resign and is thus daring her to do so. 

It is obvious that Mamata doesn’t want to give Trivedi any political space and that is the reason why she is relying on the Prime Minister to get rid of the railway minister. But, understandably, the Prime Minister is hesitant. Congress sources argue that Dinesh Trivedi did, after all, present this government’s rail budget after due consultation with the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

That budget carries the stamp of approval of the Manmohan Singh government. Trivedi cannot be punished for doing the right thing.
It is learnt that Pranab Mukherje, who is doing the talking with Mamata Banerjee on the UPA government’s behalf, has already told her more than once that Trivedi would have to be allowed to remain in office till the budget session goes into recess on March 30.

Even if Mamata is insisting on an earlier date of removal, Mukherjee has been asked by the government to convince the Trinamool chief that she should allow Trivedi to continue in office till the end of this month.

Of course, the government knows that they cannot go on protecting Trivedi for long and that he would have to bow out of office.

The government does know that it will inevitably have to surrender to coalition compulsions but this impasse shows that the relationship between Congress and the TMC has officially turned into one of mutual suspicion and has now started bordering on paranoia.

Even if this crisis finally blows over, such a degree of hostility between allies doesn’t augur well for the health and longevity of the coalition.