Indian coalition party leaves government The biggest ally of India's Congress party withdrew from the governing coalition on Tuesday night, threatening the stability of the government in a protest against a cut in fuel subsidies and other economic reforms launched last week. Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal and head of the Trinamool Congress, said the six ministers the party had contributed to the coalition would tender their resignations to Manmohan Singh, the Congress prime minister. The party has 19 of the 545 seats in the lower house of parliament, while Congress has 205. "We are withdrawing our support," Ms Banerjee said after a party meeting. The government has lost their credentials . . . We will not tolerate any anti-people decisions and we will oppose everything. However, she said the party would review its decision if the government stopped its plan to allow foreign investors to hold majority stakes in supermarkets and department stores and if it also partially reversed a sharp rise in the price of diesel. Palaniappan Chidambaram, the finance minister behind the flurry of recent reforms, has ruled out any climbdown and political commentators say Mr Singh's coalition is likely to continue for the time being with the support of votes from a range of other parties. As much as a genuine protest against the reforms, Ms Banerjee's move may be an attempt to press the government to approve a financial bailout package for West Bengal, which is struggling under the burden of debts incurred during more than 30 years of Communist rule of the state. Mani Shankar Aiyer, a senior Congress politician, said he believed the door remained open for Congress to keep Ms Banerjee and her party on board. "There is a clear indication that there are areas in which there could be reconciliation," Mr Aiyer said. Ms Banerjee left the Congress to form her own party in 1997 and opposed the Communists in West Bengal until she finally defeated them in an election in 2011. Swapan Dasgupta, a political analyst, said: "This government has been reduced to a minority but that doesn't mean it will fall right away . . . The countdown to the end of the Manmohan Singh government has begun - but a countdown starts at 10. Mr Singh's government cut subsidies to raise the price of diesel by about 14 per cent last Thursday, in a drive to curb the budget deficit, and the following day unveiled a series of unexpectedly bold reforms. They included the opening of aviation and the retail trade to foreign investors, and partial privatisations. Opposition groups, including several leftwing parties and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, have called for a strike and nationwide protests this Thursday, arguing that Congress leaders will hurt the poor and are trying to divert attention from corruption scandals. Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh