Prime Minister is in no mood to offer Mamata Banerji anything other than Coal ministry, say sources close to him. No matter what Mamata’s Trinamool MPs may hope for, Vajpayee and his deputy, L.K. Advani, are one on this. Realising this, the Trinamool chief called on Advani last week and also attended an RSS function.Having gone through an exercise last week to see who he could shift around, Vajpayee seems to have thrown in the towel and Mamata may have to be content with being a minister without portfolio. At least till the time the PM is abroad.She is in elevated company — if only she could take advantage of her situation. With the exception of Murasoli Maran who was conferred the title of minister without portfolio because of his illness, ministers without portfolio have long been men known for their proximity to PM and regarded as number two.Mamata may have joined the ranks of those highly trusted by the PM, but she has not been able to use the fact. She suffers from the handicap of not being a member of Vajpayee’s party to take advantage of the situation.Senior BJP leaders admit the one-and-a-half member Cabinet expansion last week was a badly managed affair. It is hardly a secret that the re-entry of Trinamool Congress chief had been held up over all these months due to differences over a portfolio for her.The PM convinced her to accept to be minister without portfolio till he can come up with something. But effecting the musical chairs is proving to be more difficult than the PM had probably imagined. Mamata is stuck in the Government this time. It is not going to be so easy for her to quit and BJP knows it too well. Senior leaders say BJP is even prepared for her to leave the government after the puja festival. She must know that she cannot be coming in and out of the government without damaging her image. BJP leaders feel that since the PM agreed to her demand that only she, and no one else from her party, be inducted, she should not be so unyielding.Mamata’s problems with the Coal ministry are two fold. It does not have the public interface a politician like her would have liked. Besides the mafia control over the coal sector, she would have to contend with the unions many of which are controlled by the Left parties, a red rag to her. There was a time when the BJP was prepared to give Mamata Ministry of Rural Development but she was not interested then. Today, she covets the ministry but the BJP is not prepared to part with it. She would really like to recapture Railways but Nitish cannot be displaced. She might have settled for Civil Aviation but Rajiv Pratap Rudy has powerful backers in Jaswant Singh and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. Even Urban Development has a public face but Bandaru Dattatreya has just been elevated as Minister, thanks to the support of BJP chief Venkaiah Naidu and Chandrababu Naidu.
