New Delhi, Sep 19: At a top-level Congress Core Group meeting at the Prime Minister's official residence at 7, Race Course Road this morning, the party leadership decided to call Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee's bluff, but at the same time, offer a very marginal rollback in diesel price and LPG cap.
The two-hour-long meeting was attended by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, P Chidambaram, and A K Antony.
The party leadership want to give a very marginal rollback in diesel price hike, while slightly raising the cap on subsidized LPG cylinders. On FDI in retail, the party's stand was still not clear.
The Congress is banking on support from Samajwadi Party, BSP and DMK to sail through with a comfortable majority inside the Lok Sabha.
With the pullout by Trinamool Congress putting UPA-2 in a minority, the party has now begun efforts to rope in support from Mulayam Singh, Mayawati and M Karunanidhi.
The numbers game for the moment appears thus:
UPA minus TMC = 254,
UPA minus TMC plus SP = 276
UPA minus TMC plus BSP = 275
UPA minus TMC + Sp, BSP, RJD, JDS = 304
The magical majority mark in Lok Sabha is 272
For now, Mamata Banerjee's Friday deadline for the resignations by her ministers stands, provided the Centre decides on three points: (1) put the FDI decision on hold (2) roll back diesel price hike by Rs 3 or 4,and (3) raise the cap on subsidized LPG cylinders from 6 to twelve.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi drove to the 7, Race Course Road residence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and was closeted with him over discussions on how to tackle the threat to the Government caused by Trinamool's decision.
Home Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony and Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel were also present in the discussion.
Earlier in the day, Planning CommissionDeputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia had a meeting with the Prime Minister.
Trinamool,the second largest constituent of UPA with 19 MPs last night decided to withdraw support to the government and pull out its ministers opposing the decision to hike diesel price, cap supply of subsidised LPG cylinders and allow FDI in multi brand retail.
It has set a deadline of Friday afternoon to reconsiderits stand if the government rolls back its decisions.
Meanwhile, Mulayam Singh Yadav, leader of the 22-strong Samajwadi Party, whose support for government assumes importance in the current context, expressed opposition to Government's decisions but declined to reveal the party strategy.
“Tomorrow there is a meeting of the Samajwadi Party'sParliamentary Board. We will decide our strategy there,” he told reporters here.
