NEW DELHI: The Congress on Sunday came out strongly against the TMC and dismissed Mamata Banerjee's dare as mere posturing. Party leader Salman Khurshid said that Mamata was merely trying to pander to her constituency.
"Individual leaders constituents, people who represent Assembly segments, parliamentarians… they all need to survive and they have constituencies they need to pander to or certainly to respond to and some of these things therefore are done as posturing, so that you are at the right side of the expectations of your people and I’m sure that Mamataji also has expectations of people who have voted for her and change the ruling establishment after such a long time.
"But then again we are a national party. We have a lot of expectations that go beyond the concerns of only one state. So there will be sometimes a mismatch in expectations, a mismatch in our responses and sometimes a mismatch in answering to our constituencies.
"I don't think we must read too much into these things. I would certainly imagine if we could avoid them good. Even if there are disagreements, we can put them across in closed rooms.
"I hope something like this will be worked out," he said.
Mamata had hit out at the Congress on Saturday saying it was free to leave the alliance. Congress retorted saying it was not scared of anyone. However, it added that it was ready to talk.
On Saturday, TMC's Subrata Mukherjee launched another attack on its ally, saying that the Congress and the CPI(M) were two sides of the same coin.
Keeping Mamata in good humour is crucial for the Congress especially with the budget session not too far away. Key issues awaiting her support are FDI in retail, an inevitable fuel hike, Pensions Bill and the Lokpal Bill.
What is worse is that Congress is aware that with the Budget around, Mamata's pressure is likely to increase and Congress sources say that now a call needs to be taken on how long to put up with Didi's pressures.