UPA allies led by Mamata Banerjee on Friday sharply criticised the 2.69% hike in petrol prices and demanded a rollback, but despite threatening noises, seemed unlikely to bring the government down.

The protest by Trinamool, NCP and the National Conference even led to murmurs within the Congress of considering some rollback. But another ally, DMK, said it would not withdraw support on the issue.

The most vocal criticism, including a threatened withdrawal from the UPA coalition, came from West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is due to face panchayat and local body elections in the state in early 2012.

?Our withdrawal of support may result in fall of the government. But since the Prime Minister is away, we want to discuss with him and have sought an appointment with him,? Banerjee said in Kolkata, after a meeting of her party seniors on the matter. She complained that her colleague Dinesh Trivedi, railway minister in the Union Cabinet, had not been consulted before the decision to hike prices was taken. Trinamool Congress is pitching hard for a debt support for West Bengal from the finance ministry that could cost upward of R10,000 crore in this fiscal itself.

Industry minister Anand Sharma, who was in Kolkata, did some damage control by pointing out that ties between the government and the Trinamool Congress were deep. ?Mamata ji is our old ally,? he said. Defending the rise in petrol prices (by R1.82 per litre), IOC chairman RS Butola said oil marketing companies had lost R2,468 crore on selling petrol products at below cost in the first half of the current fiscal. This was on top of R2,500-crore loss they had incurred in 2010-11. He said his company did not plan to roll back the prices, ?but if we get a directive (to roll back prices), we will have to implement that?.

The current price hike, the 24th since the UPA first came to power, comes on the back of a 12.21% rise in weekly food inflation.

Banerjee has found support from the Nationalist Congress Party and National Conference which also have expressed their displeasure at the latest hike and want a roll back.

?In the next Cabinet meeting there will be a debate on it,? new and renewable energy minister Farooq Abdullah said. On his part, NCP’s Tariq Anwar said: ?We are very much concerned. The government should devise some mechanism to check frequent hike in petrol prices?. Both, however, maintained that the two parties were not considering withdrawal of support.

The strong protests by the allies seems to have left the Congress stunned with party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi saying that ?the allies’ grievances are genuine and not obstructionist?. Unofficially, word filtered out from ?Congress sources? that the government could consider a rollback.

For the record, however finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said, ?petrol is a decontrolled item, nobody in the government knows about the hike because prices are increased by the petroleum companies and not the government?.