At least two allies of the Congress in the UPA — the NCP and the Trinamul Congress — publicly viewed the need to have a coordination committee between the Congress and the allies for better coordination in UPA-2.
The NCP, whose chief and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has come under criticism from within a section of the Congress, strongly felt the need of formation of a coordination committee.
The Congress’ reluctance to put the record straight on this issue compelled Mr Pawar to clarify his position.
On Saturday, he hit back at his detractors saying that it was “not right” to blame his ministry for price rise and that it was a collective decision-making process involving the Prime Minister as well as the finance minister.
NCP general secretary D.P. Tripathi on Sunday made a strong case for a UPA-2 coordination committee claiming that the coalition is a unique one in the contemporary world as it had no such mechanism for coordination.
“In contemporary democracies in any part of the world, UPA-2 is the only coalition where there is neither formal nor informal coordination,” said Mr Tripathi.
“In order to fight anti-coalition forces, such a committee is essential,” Mr Tripathi added.
Mr Sudip Bandyopadhyay of the Trinamul Congress, the second largest constituent of UPA-2, puts the situation differently.
“We are firmly behind the UPA-2. We are totally for it to have a better coordination,” he said.
To drive home his point, he recalls that finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is the leader of the Lok Sabha, had held two meetings of the UPA-2 constituents on the issue of JPC into the 2G spectrum allocation scam.