Jan Lokpal Bill: Trinamool refuses to support government's anti-Anna Hazare stand

NEW DELHI: Congress' key ally Trinamool Congress is reluctant to back a tough response to Anna Hazare's anti-graft campaign. Trinamool chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has asked her party MPs not to support the anti-Anna line being pushed by a section of Congress.

The stand taken by the Trinamool Congress must be discomforting for Congress as it was hoping for a concerted UPA reponse to the Anna agitation. NCP had on Saturday said Congress should have discussed the issue with its allies.

The refusal to support an aggressive anti-Anna line is not surprising as a large section of the middle class and the not-so-well off have joined the anti-corruption movement. The large crowds gathering in cities and towns over Anna's agitation show the growing popular anger against corruption. The allies will not like the negative mood to rub off on them.

Congress has only itself to blame as prime minister's advisors converted the negotiations with Team Anna into a private affair. Team Anna was even told that there was no need for taking the Opposition on board.

The government managers had hoped that they could easily blunt the activist side's views on the anti-graft legislation.

The Opposition had come down heavily on this approach. "The government deliberately kept the Opposition out of the discussion. It led activists up the garden path. It abandoned them when they become inconvenient," BJP leader Arun Jaitley had said when the prime minister attempted to convert the confrontation into a "Parliament versus civil society" tussle.

What is worrying the government is the call from within UPA to include the Prime Minister's Office in the ambit of Lokpal. DMK, one of the sources of Manmohan Singh's image deficit, has been maintaining that the bill will become meaningful only if the prime minister is brought under it.