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Mamata’s meeting with PM Modi is ‘satisfactory’ — but no talks on NRC, ‘missing’ top cop

This was Banerjee's first meeting with Modi after his government came to power for a second consecutive term in May this year.

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New Delhi: After a bitter and prolonged face-off with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “satisfactory” and “fruitful” is how West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee described her meeting with him in the national capital Wednesday.

The thorny issue of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a persistent bone of contention between Banerjee and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), did not come up for discussions, according to the Bengal CM.

This was Banerjee’s first meeting with Modi after the NDA government came to power for a second consecutive term in May this year. The last time the two had met was in May 2018 at Shantiniketan, during the Visva Bharati University’s convocation ceremony.

The Trinamool Congress chief carried a kurta and sweets to greet the PM at his residence, a day after his birthday.

A vocal critic of the BJP government and the PM, Banerjee called the meeting “non political”.

“The BJP can make political statements wherever they want. My meeting with PM Modi was non political,” she told reporters soon after coming out of Modi’s residence. Only last week, Banerjee had taken out a huge rally in West Bengal to protest against the BJP’s plan of updating the NRC across the country.

The Modi-Banerjee meet also came close on the heels of the CBI issuing a fresh notice to former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who the agency wants to question in the Sarada chit fund scam. Despite being summoned thrice, Kumar has failed to turn up for questioning and is apparently “untraceable“. When asked if the matter was discussed with the PM, she said, “Don’t ask me such nuisance questions…did not discuss all this with PM Modi.”

Responding to a question on NRC, Banerjee said it is limited to Assam. “It was part of the Assam accord. There is no proposal for NRC for West Bengal. We will not do it in Bengal.”


Also read: Not just Rajeev Kumar, 3 more top IAS and IPS officers close to Mamata are being probed


Proposal to rename West Bengal, development in state discussed

After the meeting, Banerjee said she raised the issue of renaming West Bengal to Bangla. “The PM has promised that he will do something about the matter,” she told reporters.

She also invited the PM to Bengal to flag off the coal field project in Birbhum. “I have requested the PM to attend the programme for the world’s second-largest coal block Deocha Pachami in Birbhum district after Navratri. The project is worth Rs 12,000 crore,” Banerjee added.

Disinvestment in the public sector undertakings (PSU) in West Bengal also came up in the discussions with Modi.

Banerjee said she also bought up the issue of the approximately Rs 13,000 crore dues that the Centre owes to the West Bengal government towards various projects. “I have submitted a memorandum to the PM on this.”

The West Bengal CM further said she has sought time to meet Home Minister Amit Shah too. “I want to make a courtesy call to him tomorrow,” she said.

Banerjee had earlier skipped Modi’s swearing-in ceremony after the BJP decided to invite families of those who were allegedly murdered in political violence in Bengal. In June, she did not turn up for the meeting of CMs at the Niti Aayog, which was chaired by PM Modi. The TMC government has also refused to implement many of the central government schemes, including Smart City projects and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

While leaving for Delhi Tuesday, Banerjee had said her meeting with the prime minister would be “strictly routine”.

A softening of stance?

Banerjee being one of the strident critics of Modi, many in the BJP see her meeting with the PM as a “softening of her stance” towards the Centre.

A BJP leader based in West Bengal said Banerjee has now started imitating the saffron party’s style of campaigning in the state. “Like our Save Bengal initiative, during which we connected with the masses and eminent people, Banerjee has now started reaching out to both the state’s intelligentsia and its common people. She has realised that her earlier anti-Modi campaign was becoming counter productive,” the leader said.

Another BJP leader, however, said, “It’s just a PR exercise ahead of the assembly elections in the state in 2021.”

West Bengal has witnessed one of the most bitter and violent election campaigns in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The face-off between BJP and TMC has only aggravated since then. While the BJP had breached Banerjee’s turf in Bengal and won 18 of the 42 parliamentary seats — the highest the party has got in the state till date — TMC’s numbers came down to 22 from 34 in 2014.

The BJP had built its political discourse in West Bengal mostly around Hindutva and nationalism, which resulted in massive polarisation in the state, that has a 27 per cent Muslim population.


Also read: Mamata says 10 lakh people called her helpline, but here’s how many actually got help


 

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