Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 29: In a tussle between two unequal, the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused the prime minister’s office of feeding “one-sided” version of the alleged fiasco of the PM-CM meeting of Friday and claimed that instead of she making Narendra Modi wait for 30 minutes, it was actually she who was made to wait for over 20 minutes outside the meeting venue.
Accusing the PMO of feeding “fake, one-sided, partisan news” to the media, Banerjee retorted, “Don’t insult me like this. We have got a landslide victory, is that why you are behaving like this? You tried everything and lost. Why are you quarrelling with us every day?” Banerjee said at a news conference at the state secretariat Nabanna “to set things straight.” Stating that she “felt insulted,” Banerjee alleged that the PMO has “humiliated” her and “tarnished her image by posting tweets” on the meet.
Giving her version of Friday’s events that led to her alleged “skipping” of her meeting with the prime minister bringing about scores of criticism from the centre and the ruling BJP, Banerjee claimed that when she reached the meeting venue, she was told by the SPG posted outside the hall that Modi was already there and was “in a meeting.”
Refusing her permission to enter the hall when the “meeting was on,” she was asked to wait outside till PM moved to the conference hall for his scheduled meeting with the chief minister. “We pleaded with the SPG to allow us in, but were turned down.”
She said she peeped in where Modi was holding meeting and found that the prime minister was busy talking to some BJP members of the state Assembly including the leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari, with her bête noire governor Jagdeep Dhankhar also present. “The PMO was deliberately showing the empty chairs meant for the chief minister and the chief secretary, but why should I attend a meeting where the political leaders were present?” she asked.
She wondered why should the opposition party leaders be invited by the PMO to attend a meeting meant to be held between the centre and the state government to review the damages caused by cyclone “Yaas.”
“I ask Modiji was the leaders of the opposition invited when you visited cyclone-hit Gujarat and Odisha? Then why is the difference made for West Bengal. Why should the political party representatives be invited at the official-level meeting?” she asked.
Knowledgeable sources pointed out that in cases of the prime minister visiting a state hit by a natural calamity, the PMO usually only inform the concerned state about his decision to visit and communicate the date and the time allotted for the visit. The details of the itinerary, identifying the worst-hit areas where the state government would like to take the prime minister and arranging a review meet in the presence of senior central and state officials are also left to the state government to decide.
In no such case, political party leaders are invited to attend an official-level meeting and the governor always depart after receiving the prime minister. In case of Modi’s visit to West Bengal on Friday, a number of departures were made from the usual practice, the sources pointed out.
Banerjee had a quick 15-minute interaction with Modi at an airbase where his flight landed and did not attend the review meeting, the centre had claimed on Friday.
The Chief Minister said she had to visit a coastal district – plans that were announced earlier – and so she asked the PM’s permission before leaving.
“I had made plans to visit cyclone-hit areas. I had to travel to Sagar and Digha to see the damage caused by Cyclone Yaas. All my plans were made and ready… then suddenly we get a call that Prime Minister wants to visit Bengal to assess the situation after the cyclone,” Banerjee said.
She also alleged that the Prime Minister had called the meeting only to settle political scores and invited the opposition, which includes his party BJP, and her bete noire, governor Jagdeep Dhankhar – a departure from the similar cyclone review meetings he had held in Odisha and Gujarat recently.
“By the time were reached the place where the PM-CM meeting was to be held, we found out that the PM had already arrived there some time ago and that there was a meeting going on. We were asked to wait outside, told that there will be no entry at the moment because a meeting is going on. We waited patiently for a while. Then, when we asked again, we were told that no one can enter for the next one hour,” she said.
“Then someone told us that the meeting has moved to the conference hall, so the Chief Secretary and I decided to go there. When we reached there, we saw the PM was in a meeting with the Honourable Governor, central leaders and even some MLAs of the opposition party,” Banerjee said.
“This was clearly against the brief. It was supposed to be only a PM-CM meeting. So, we decided to submit our report to the PM and then with the Prime Minister’s permission we went to Digha. I sought the Prime Minister’s permission three times,” she said.
Banerjee said she was “willing to touch the Prime Minister’s feet if it soothed his ego” because she wanted what was best for the people of Bengal. She requested him to withdraw the transfer orders for the Chief Secretary and called it an insult of bureaucrats across the country.
The encounter between Modi and Banerjee on Friday was their first since the April-May assembly election that the Chief Minister’s Trinamool Congress party won, despite a no-holds-barred campaign marked by extensive poaching and coarse rhetoric.
The ties between the two sides have been icy since long before the elections, with the TMC government accusing the centre of withholding funds owed to the state and the BJP stoking a communal divide, while the BJP has blamed Banerjee’s party of political violence. Following a large scale desertion from the TMC ranks to the BJP on the eve of the elections, Banerjee had also accused the party of indulging in corrupt practices to “purchase her party MLAs.” Modi’s by now famous “Didi-O-Didi” campaign during the elections had also caused a lot of bad blood between the two parties.
Though Banerjee did not attend the review meeting, she along with Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay met Modi ahead of it and submitted two reports demanding Rs 10,000 crore each for the development of Digha and Sunderban.
Meanwhile, as the Chief Minister did not attend the review meeting, the Centre recalled Chief Secretary Bandyopadhyay to Delhi to serve the Union government. The Centre had just four days back on May 24 approved a proposal by the state to extend his tenure by three months till August 31.
The TMC has bit back at the Centre’s decision to seek the services of Bandyopadhyay alleging that it was because the
people of the state gave an overwhelming mandate to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
TMC MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy described it as “forced central deputation” of the chief secretary. “Has this ever happened since Independence? Forced central deputation of a Chief Secretary of a state? How much lower will Modi-Shah’s BJP stoop,” Roy said.
“All because people of Bengal humiliated the duo and chose Mamata Banerjee with an overwhelming mandate,” he added.
TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said the decision was taken to derail the good work done by Bandyopadhyay, “a true soldier of Mamata Banerjee.”