Trinamool Congress will not beg before Delhi, says Mamata

KOLKATA - Taking a dig at the Congress, Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said big parties should respect smaller ones for the smooth running of a coalition, and her party “would not beg” before Delhi.

“In coalition politics, big parties should always respect small parties. And vice-versa, small parties should always have respect for big parties,” Banerjee said in an interview to a private Bengali news channel Wednesday night.

“If somebody trusts us 100 percent, then we trust them 101 percent. But we will not beg in front of Delhi and show out weakness,” Banerjee said.

She was responding to a question about the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government turning a deaf ear to her persistent demand for withdrawal of joint security forces in Maoist-hit districts of West Bengal.

The union government - which considers the Maoist guerillas as the biggest internal security threat before the country - has maintained that the joint forces are needed to flush out the guerrillas.

The Trinamool Congress is the second largest party in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance-II regime.

Banerjee, however, stated that her party would do nothing to weaken the government and would continue as an ally for the full five-year term.

“We are in a coalition government. We have given them our opinion. It’s up to them to decide what they will do and what they will not. But I want to say that we are not that kind of a party that we will blackmail them,” she said.

“I have told them about the atrocities the Communist Party of India-Marxist is unleashing on the common people in the name of joint forces operation,” Banerjee said.