Temporary problems with allies will be overcome: PM (Lead)
January 6th, 2012 - 11:08 pm ICT by IANS
New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) With tensions escalating with ruling UPA’s key alliance partner Trinamool Congress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday hoped that “temporary problems” with allies will be overcome with “determination.”
“We have our problems but I am confident that if we have the will and determination, we will overcome these temporary problems,” he said at a joint press interaction with Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, who is on a 10-day visit to India.
He, however, did not name the Trinamool, which forms the second largest United Progressive Alliance (UPA) partner with 19 MPs.
He was asked whether the UPA government’s development agenda was being affected as its coalition partners appeared to create problems for them.
“Life would not be worth living if it were not beset with one problem or the other. We are a large country with great complexity and great diversity,” he told reporters.
The Congress-Trinamool ties have remained uneasy since Banerjee joined the UPA after the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
She has bitterly opposed and blocked some of the key policies and bills of the UPA government, including the anti-corruption Lokpal bill.
Banerjee is also mainly responsible for the central government’s backtracking on the foreign direct investment plan in retail sector after she raised a red flag against the key reform measure.
She has vowed to keep opposing the Lokayukta provision in the Lokpal legislation which she fears will intrude into the autonomy of the states.
In West Bengal too, the ruling alliance of Trinamool and Congress is beset with problems. Trinamool boss and state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has accused the central government and the Left of working together in attacking her partymen.
Her party had handed the Left a humiliating defeat in Bengal last year.
The current provocation for the uneasy ties between the two partners was the West Bengal government’s proposal to rename a building named after late prime minister Indira Gandhi. Banerjee wants the Kolkata-based Indira Bhavan - where Indira Gandhi stayed in 1972 - to be named after rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.
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