TMC holds its 25,000-cr gun to UPA head,stalls govt

After staying away from PM meeting,TMC blocks pension Bill saying its views not taken.

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UNION Railway Minister Mukul Roys veto to the Pension Funds Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill at todays Cabinet is symptomatic of the deteriorating grammar in the Congress-Trinamool relationship in recent weeks,one where shrill attacks against the government have been replaced by outright defiance.

Over the last few months,Roy,who is Mamata Banerjees chief representative in the Union Cabinet,has been quite ruthless with cabinet proposals. He has blocked the note to ease restrictions in FDI norms for foreign airlines to invest in the aviation sector,which is just a change within existing FDI rules for the sector.

Its learnt that Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh had a positive conversation with Banerjee on this but has conveyed to the Prime Ministers Office that he could not guarantee a change of heart. The only yardstick is to wait for Roy to lift his objections.

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The bitterness is now affecting civility in daily transactions. On Wednesday,as is known,Roy did not make it to Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs special meeting with core sector Ministers. What is,however,not known is that the meeting had been earlier scheduled for Wednesday morning but was shifted to the evening after Roy said he was busy in the forenoon and would like a postponement.

By evening,he was still not available and demanded another postponement. At this point,an embarrassed PM decided to just go ahead without him because it would have been inappropriate to ask other cabinet ministers to change their schedule again.

On PFRDA,well after the Standing Committee on Finance has given its recommendation,Roy claims that his partys views have not been heard because the Trinamool was not represented in

Committee when discussions were held. He has asked for a special hearing for Trinamool so that its concerns can be accommodated regardless of what the parliamentary committee may have suggested.

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At the heart of this intransigence,government sources believe,is the longstanding demand for a special West Bengal debt relief package. Its learnt that the government has put together a package of sorts which amounts to about Rs 12,000 crore,but that would meet Trinamool only halfway and,thus,may not quite purchase government the cooperation it seeks from Banerjee.

The problem is that West Bengals debts are largely loans taken from the market and not from the Central government. The state has an outstanding annual debt repayment of Rs 25,560 crore. Of this,Rs 7424 crore is the principal amount. The remaining sum of over Rs 19000 crore goes towards repaying interest. And of this,only about Rs 1000 crore goes towards interest payment of loans taken from the Centre.

The remaining,approximately Rs 18109 crore,is interest payment towards loans taken from non-government sources,mainly market and commercial banks.

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