Will reply to rail budget debate in Parliament: Trivedi

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Continuing his defiance, Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi on Saturday rejected Trinamool Congress directive to him to resign from the post unless given in writing as Mamata Banerjee insisted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should remove him.

61-year-old Trivedi, who incurred the wrath of his party by hiking passenger fares in the Railway Budget, appeared to be digging his heels when he said he had a Constitutional duty to pilot the Budget he had presented in Parliament.

"I have presented the Rail Budget in Parliament. On Monday there will be discussion. I have to answer the discussion on railway budget," he told reporters after his party chief whip Kalyan Banerjee telephoned him and asked him to quit.

Mamata told reporters in Kolkata that she had already said whatever she had to say and put the ball in the Prime Minister's court for a decision.

"Now the government has to decide. Mukul Roy will be our candidate for the Railway minister," she said on her demand for removal of Trivedi and replacing him with Roy.

Trivedi's defiance puts the Prime Minister and the Congress leadership in a bind in which they have to decide on the removal of the Railway Minister or allow his continuance at the risk of possible threat of withdrawal of support by Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress.

Trinamool Congress with 19 MPs is the second largest constituent of the UPA. Highly placed Trinamool sources had claimed in Kolkata earlier that the Congress leadership had assured the party that Trivedi will be replaced after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's Budget presentation on Saturday.