TMC says it is mentally ready to quit UPA govt

Kolkata, June 18: A combative Trinamool Congress sent a terse message to Congress saying it was "mentally prepared to quit" UPA government and should not be given any "indirect threat".

"Trinamool ministers are mentally prepared to resign from the central government if the Congress thinks we are a burden or if Mamata Banerjee instructs them to do so. We will not stay by force. We should not be given any indirect threat", leader of the TMC parliamentary party in the Lok Sabha Sudip Bandopadhyay told reporters here.

"If Trinamool Congress leaves the UPA on its own, it will give a wrong message to the people that it wanted to topple the UPA government," a party leader quoted Banerjee as having said at a crucial meeting of party MPs and MLAs shortly after A P J Abdul Kalam announced his decision to opt out of the presidential race.

Briefing newsmen about the nearly two-hour meeting, leader of the parliamentary party, Bandopadhyay, however, said reports that party MPS and union ministers submitting letters of resignation to the party supremo were "totally baseless."

"We have not tendered our resignation letters anywhere, neither to the party supremo nor to the government. "Our leader Mamata Banerjee has categorically said that we do not want to make this government weak," Bandopadhyay said.

"It is an ugly and motivated report. It will not take us a second's time to resign from the UPA government. If Mamata directs, Railway minister Mukul Roy and the other six ministers of state would resign."

Asked whether the Trinamool Congress would support former Lok Sabha speaker P.A. Sangma if he contested the presidential polls, he said, "We have not taken such a decision at the meeting. As the situation develops the party will sit and decide the future course of action."

He said that the parliamentary party and the legislature party authorised the party chief to take a decision on the presidential polls.

PTI