Will The Grass Lose Its Roots?

Ashis K. Biswas September 23, 2002 00:00 IST Will The Grass Lose Its Roots? -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

For Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress, it is still downhill all the way. bjp honchos Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, who recently visited Calcutta, did little to bring her closer to the BJP. At the end of the week, whether Trinamul is with the nda or not remains as much an unsolved riddle as it was before. "No truck with the bjp even at the social level," was Mamata’s grandiloquent proclamation.

The BJP, meanwhile, sent conflicting signals. Naidu said it was up to Mamata to decide whether she wanted to stay in the nda or not. The BJP president’s sternness showed through and through: "In case the Trinamul wants to fight the Marxists in Bengal it is fine. If, on the other hand, it wants to remain a one-issue party (read Eastern Railways bifurcation), so be it." Mahajan was more conciliatory, paying glowing tributes to Didi for her fight against the Left Front.

Mamata, however, seemed unwilling to budge and stuck to her guns. But the go-it alone policy seems to have paid little dividends, considering the steady erosion of her...