Railway minister Mamata Banerjee raised quite a few eyebrows by skipping Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting though she was in New Delhi, but chose to explain her absence by saying she had some “serious job” to do. In the evening, however, she did attend the UPA-2 report card release function at the Prime Minister’s 7 Race Course Road residence.
Ms Banerjee returned to New Delhi on Monday after a long gap, when she missed a series of key Cabinet meetings, but Tuesday’s meeting (primarily to approve President’s Rule in Jharkhand), in her eyes, was not that important. “It depends on how serious the meeting is... Sometimes ministers go, sometimes they have other duties. It is a very casual thing,” she told reporters later.
She also hit back at those criticising her absenteeism, saying that her predecessor Lalu Prasad Yadav ... “if I remember correctly... did not answer a single question in Parliament in five years. I replied to 99.9 per cent of the questions... Why didn’t any of you ask him about that?”
She also showed a “softer” side towards the Congress a day before West Bengal’s civic election results are declared, saying her ties with the party were “comfortable” and there were no differences, and that she had great respect for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
This was in sharp contrast to her combative attitude towards the Congress over the past few weeks, when she accused a section of that party of being in league with the CPI(M), her bitter rivals.