adminbecause we are a coalition government,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told parliament.
“We have to formulate policy with the need to maintain consensus,” the 79-year-old Congress premier added. “This was sharply brought out in presentation of the railway budget.”
Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi quit late on Sunday after facing a mutiny in his Trinamool Congress Party, a minority party in the coalition whose leader Mamata Banerjee blasted the proposed fare hikes as “anti-poor”.
Singh told parliament he accepted “with regret” the departure of Trivedi, who has been in office for less than a year. He noted the minister had promised to carry out a “modernising” vision for the railways laid out by Banerjee, who served as the previous rail minister.
Singh appealed to fractious coalition allies to back reforms to spur growth of Asia’s third-largest economy.
“This is an occasion when we must eschew narrow partisan ends and stand united as a nation,” Singh said.
Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress Party is an increasingly unreliable government ally, which sank plans last year to allow foreign supermarkets into India.
The storm over rail fares is the latest in a series of embarrassing internal policy disputes that have paralysed the government’s liberalisation programme. — AFP.
Online Reporter
- Herald
- July 31, 2026
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