The Prime Minister’s reported remark to one of the Trinamul ministers over their absence from the national capital clearly took a leaf out of their leader and West Bengal CM Ms Mamata Banerjee’s famed regular absence to the extent of skipping the Cabinet meeting before the crucial Assembly polls in West Bengal.
The junior ministers from the party’s quota in the UPA government continue to hop on hop off to Kolkata from Delhi.
The Prime Minister’s barb could also be seen in the backdrop of much publicised incident in which Mukul Roy, the then minister of state for railways, had ignored Dr Singh’s instruction to visit a train accident site.
At that time, since Ms Banerjee had become the West Bengal chief minister, the railways portfolio was with the Prime Minister, who appears to have a first hand experience of Trinamul ministers’ habit of not taking their jobs seriously.
At that time too, Mr Roy was in Kolkata.
Within the Trinamul circle, it is said that the ministers from the party at the Centre have been asked by Ms Mamata Banerjee to keep a close eye on their respective constituencies to ward off any backlash from the Left cadres in the state over the decisions taken by the UPA government at the Centre.