With Mamata hitting out at Centre during meeting with Modi, TMC-BJP verbal duel intensifies
Mamata Banerjee had hit out at Centre during the video-conference with Modi, alleging it was trying to gain political mileage at the expense of the state government.
The war of words between Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) intensified on Monday after the West Bengal chief minister’s outburst against the Centre during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with chief ministers.
Both parties sharpened attacks on each other, with the TMC targeting PM Modi for an ill-planned lockdown and late response to the Covid-19 situation and the BJP hitting out at the state government for not doing enough during the coronavirus pandemic and “a collapse of the administration.”
“The PM held no meeting with the chief ministers before announcing the lockdown. The centre thought they could handle the situation in 15 days and would then alone take the credit of it all,” Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC youth wing chief, was heard saying in a video clip released by the party.
“Meetings with chief ministers are being held before announcing the second and third phase lockdown because the situation is not in control. Why didn’t they think of and plan for the migrant workers before announcing the lockdown?” Abhishek Banerjee asked.
“There are apprehensions about the fallout of letting long-distance trains run. They Centre should provide all with more clarity,” TMC secretary-general and state education minister Partha Chatterjee said.
He, too, alleged that BJP was busy playing politics when the focus should have been on putting up a unit fight against Covid-19.
Mamata Banerjee had hit out at Centre in the afternoon during the video-conference with Modi, alleging it was trying to gain political mileage at the expense of the state government.
“We as a state doing our best to combat the virus. The Centre should not play politics in this crucial time. We are surrounded by international borders and other bigger states and have challenges to deal with… All the states should be given equal importance and we should work together as Team India,” she said adding that the federal structure should be respected.
In the evening, BJP leaders targeted the state government of minority appeasement, mismanagement over bringing migrant workers back, implementing a lax lockdown and failure in managing the public distribution system.
“The Centre is not playing politics. The Centre had to intervene because the state was failing its people. The state played hide and seek with data and the real Covid-19 scenario, let the lockdown be easily violated, corrupted the public distribution system and also wanted to leave the migrant workers at lurch,” BJP’s state unit president Dilip Ghosh said.
“In every case, the state acted after the Centre intervened. The government has failed in most critical aspects – health and home affairs – and both portfolios are held by the chief minister,” Ghosh added.
“It’s not a time for politics. It’s a national crisis and the time is for uniting under the leadership of the prime minister and fight Covid-19,” BJP national executive member Mukul Roy said.
All senior leaders of the West Bengal unit of the BJP, including central observers Kailash Vijayvargiya, Shiv Prakash and Arvind Menon, Union ministers Babul Supriyo and Debasree Chaudhuri and members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, also took digs at the Mamata Banerjee government for utmost failure.
