A raging debate is imminent today at the UF steering panel meeting over the issue of raising petrogoods prices. Gujral will need a miracle to pull it off
Prime Minister I K Gujral will once again be hard put to reconcile the opposing factions within the United Front on the issue of an increase in petroleum prices. However, for Gujral to pull it off at todays steering committee meeting will require nothing short of a miracle.
The situation has been complicated by the latest duel between Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). TMC leader and Union finance minister P Chidambaram has cautioned CPIM against pressuring the Steering Committee into following its agenda.
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Chidambaram said his party was in the United Front to implement not the CPI (M)s economic agenda, but its own. He even threatened that all the TMC ministers would quit in case CPI (M) continued to press for implementation of its own economic policies.The threat seems to have made CPI (M) take a still harder stand on oil price hike. The party says it would go down fighting against the emerging consensus in the United Front for a hike.
We will not be a party to a consensus on hiking the price of petrol or any other petro-product, said CPI (M) politburo member Prakash Karat.
Even if Gujral is able to resolve the differences among the UF constituents, it is not known how he plans to tackle the Congress, which, at its recent plenary in Calcutta, had voiced strong opposition to oil price hike. The economic resolution adopted at the session said the party would not support a temporary and stop-gap move to balance the oil deficit equation. A mere ad-hoc increase in prices cannot provide a lasting solution to the depleted petroleum sector.
Political observers point out that, like in the past, the fear of impending mid-term elections is keeping all the political parties from endorsing the price-hike, though the parties concede in private that a hike is long overdue.
Nonetheless, petroleum ministry officials are hopeful of a consensus on the issue at todays meeting.
They point out that the Prime Minister has been working on it for long and made most UF and Congress leaders agree to hike. They say some parties may still put on record their opposition to the move, but would not do anything to destabilise the government.