Price rise is not only making a hole in the common mans pocket, it also seems to be having a puncturing effect on the UPA with allies like NCP and RJD openly taking on Congress, particularly after the inflation rate touched the seven per cent mark.
NCP, which for quite some time had been making informal noises through the media on Congress’ alleged violation of the coalition dharma by not taking its allies into confidence on many issues, including the India-US nuclear deal, has now openly accused Sonia Gandhi’s party on this count.
The immediate official reason for attacking Congress is its apparent attempt to “poach” NCP MLAs in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, but informed sources say actually it was because the former was trying to blame NCP supremo and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for the rising prices of essential food items.
NCP’s view is that if anyone has to take the blame for inflation, first it has to be Finance Minister P Chidambaram. NCP has decided to target only the party, and thus indirectly Sonia Gandhi, while giving a clean chit to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. This separation is being seen as a politically shrewd move by NCP in the context of Mr Pawar’s recent comment that the latter be declared UPA’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha elections and that UPA should go into the polls as a pre-poll alliance.
Those following the intricacies of coalition politics see in this a shrewd strategy - creating pressure on Congress not to make MP Rahul Gandhi a candidate for the top post.
Mr Pawar’s demand came almost simultaneously with a slowly-emerging demand from among Congress quarters, with the Uttar Pradesh state Congress taking the lead, to make Mr Gandhi the Prime Ministerial candidate.
But it is the context of rising prices that the allies are trying to distance themselves from Congress, in a year marked with a number of Assembly elections.
While NCP has decided to take up the cudgels for its leader Pawar, RJD’s Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, who holds the Rural Development portfolio in the Union Cabinet, has also quite openly made his party’s displeasure against Congress known on the price rise front.
Meanwhile, NCP has also come out in the open about its openness to the idea of a “anti-BJP, anti-Congress” Third Front, about which the Left is making increasing noises in recent times.
