Coalition blinkers

Coalition politics creates double standards, as the Congress recently demonstrated. Recently, a Congress spokesperson let loose a barrage of criticism against BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi for transferring 68 officers including 50 IAS officers in the state. It was “well thought out strategy” and “advance planning” in the run up to the year-end Assembly polls in Gujarat, the spokesperson alleged. Yet the spokesperson was dismissive when questioned about a similar move by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Unable to explain why its ally Trinamool Congress was transferring officers at whim (including the upright police detective Damayanti Sen), the Congress spokesperson chose to ignore the comment that Bengal, too, was headed for Panchayat polls.