New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to several district collectors and state secretaries as well as the chief ministers of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra over a video call recently, but did not invite any of the chief ministers to speak, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren has said in an interview to ThePrint.
“I was also present in that call. All the chief ministers sat there without saying a word. What is the point of asking CMs to attend if you want to speak to officials?” Soren asked.
Soren was responding to questions related to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s recent comments about “one-way humiliation” in a meeting with PM Modi, in which he was also present.
In the interview, Soren also commented extensively about the PM’s own phone call to him three weeks ago, after which he tweeted that “it would have been better if the PM had also listened” instead of only speaking.
‘Attacked heart of India’s federal structure’
Soren pointed out that the PM’s video call to CMs as well as officials — like collectors and secretaries — attacked the very heart of India’s federal structure, because the PM was bringing both elected leaders and officials on the same platform.
“In our federal history, the PM doesn’t directly review collectors & secretaries. Does this mean we should review officials of the central government?” the Jharkhand CM asked.
Soren also recounted the early years when PM Modi had just come to power at the Centre and he was in his first stint as chief minister. He said the PM would come to Jharkhand for an official programme, and BJP workers would do “political hooting”.
Asked if this was what Mamata Banerjee had referred to during the Bengal election campaign — when BJP workers had taunted the chief minister and her party at an official function in Kolkata — Soren nodded in assent.
“When the BJP workers did political hooting, the PM did not say anything. What can one understand from this?” Soren asked. He then answered the question himself. “The PM’s way of working is as if ‘I am the only one in this country & there can’t be anyone else’,” he said.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader pointed to his much-discussed tweet on 6 May, underlining the chasm between the PM and opposition chief ministers, and going beyond the open hostility between Modi and Mamata Banerjee.
“The call from the PM to me lasted not more than two minutes. I was actually not going to tweet about it, but that evening, I saw on the evening news that the PM was supposed to have called me and spoken to me about the pandemic situation in Jharkhand. This was not a pandemic phone call, but a political phone call,” Soren said, explaining that the PM’s call barely lasted two minutes, which included a call drop, after which he called back.
“The PM’s call to me was about making political TRPs,” Soren said, adding, “neither did the PM listen to what I had to say about the situation in Jharkhand, nor did he offer any solutions”.
Also read: How Modi’s mantra of ‘cooperative federalism’ has unravelled under 2nd Covid wave strain
‘Centre should behave like a parent to states’
Soren pointed out that Covid was sparing neither the BJP nor his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and that since the Centre manages and funds revenues for states, including oxygen supplies and medicines, it should “behave like a parent”, and guide and advise smaller states like Jharkhand on how to handle the pandemic.
“In this pandemic, we should forget about politics and work to save lives,” Soren said. “If this is a national disaster, then Centre’s responsibility is greater.”
Soren also talked about the “enormous red-tape” in the Union health ministry that is affecting pandemic control. For example, he said Jharkhand wanted to import the anti-Covid drug remdesivir from Bangladesh, and even though Union health minister Harsh Vardhan finally allowed the import, it was found that without the ICMR’s permission, the drug could not be used.
“We spent so much time figuring out the rules and regulations that we just got tired and moved on to something else,” said Soren, ruefully.
The CM pointed out that Jharkhand is the biggest producer of oxygen in the country and that when the coronavirus was rampaging across Delhi and Mumbai and elsewhere, he was getting calls from chief ministers all over the country, desperate for oxygen.
“But the Centre decides allocation, so I could not give directly to these states. Oxygen was going from Jharkhand by air and by train, but where it was going, only the Centre knows,” he said. “I told (Home Minister) Amit Shah ji about this,” he added.
Soren also talked about how the states had been left largely to their own devices to handle the pandemic, but that the Centre was not willing to accept its responsibility for the crisis.
“We declared Covid was defeated, so ‘corona warriors’ became relaxed. We could have prepared for a second Covid wave, but slipped up. Mismanagement in handling Covid means that states had to lock down,” he said.
Soren talked about the growing communication gap between Centre and states. When the lockdown took effect last year and Jharkhandis working in Ladakh were stranded, the Jharkhand government had to airlift them at its own expense; and when some Jharkhand-origin workers got stuck in Nepal recently, he informed the Ministry of External Affairs, but his government had to ultimately get them out on its own.
Asked why vaccine certificates in Jharkhand carried his photo, Soren shot back: “If the PM can have his photo on vaccine certificates at the Centre, why can’t the CM have his photo?”
(Edited by Shreyas Sharma)