By IANS,
Kolkata : As the Trinamool Congress leadership seemed to be inching toward putting a full stop to Dinesh Trivedi’s stint as railway minister, he found a supporter in party MP Kabir Suman, who not only supported the rail fare hikes but also asserted that the railway minister was not the party’s property.
“The railway ministry is a very big ministry. A railway minister has to run it properly. The budget is so vast that it can easily surpass the general budget of some nations. The railway ministry is not a place of personal catfights,” said Suman, who is known for his frequent off-the-cuff remarks.
“We have to keep faith in Trivedi and other ministers. Now, if the party starts fighting with Trivedi regarding any issue then it doesn’t look good for democracy. We all know that (Trinamool president and West Bengal Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee wants to keep her pro-people image intact. There is nothing wrong in it.
“But to remove someone if he is not following the party line and replace him with somebody else is not good for democracy. It dosen’t look decent when the budget session is going on. The moment Dinesh Trivedi tookk over as railway minister nobody should consider him the property of a party,” Suman added.
Soon after Trivedi finished presenting the railway budget on Wednesday, Trinamool parliamentary party leader Sudip Bandopadhyay lashed out against it and demanded a rollback of the fare hikes, failing which the party would protest inside and outside parliament.
Banerjee told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday night to make her Trinamool colleague Mukul Roy the railway minister in Trivedi’s place after he refused to back off despite her strident criticism.
Suman’s relationship with the Trinamool leadership is strrained after he spoke out against alleged corruption among a section of party leaders and openly condemned the joint forces operation in the Maoist-infested districts of the state.