Another front opens between Trinamool Congress & Congress

NEW DELHI: Key UPA ally Trinamool Congress has opened another front with Congress by opposing the appointment of senior Congress leader Shankarsingh Vaghela as chairman of India Tourism Development Corporation ( ITDC) with a cabinet minister rank.

"I wrote a letter yesterday to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing my reservations against the appointment of Vaghela as ITDC chairman with a cabinet minister rank," TMC leader and Minister of State for Tourism Sultan Ahmed said today.

ITDC is a PSU under the Tourism Ministry. The Appointment Committee of Cabinet (ACC) approved the appointment of Vaghela as part-time chairman of ITDC with a cabinet rank on May 31.

Ahmed said "it is a contradictory situation. On one hand, government has announced austerity measures and on the other hand it has created a cabinet post."

"When there is already a Cabinet Minister Tourism Ministry (Subodh Kant Sahai) and MoS, where is the need for another one?" he said.

Ahmed further said "the matter was not even discussed nor did the government bother to inform me about the appointment. There has never been any political appointment in the ITDC top post and it is first time that ITDC will be headed by a political person."

This is the latest points of friction between Trinamool Congress and Congress after the Mamata Banerjee-led party had opposed the government's big-ticket economic reforms like FDI in retail and pension fund reforms and setting up of NCTC.