Upset over 'no consultation': TMC clarifies stance on all-party delegation

She stressed that the Centre should not decide which party sends whom as part of the delegation.

Kolkata: After Congress, the Trinamool Congress too has hit out at the Union Government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party for not consulting the party before choosing its representative to join the all-party delegations, which would visit foreign capitals to amplify India’s message against cross-border terrorism coming out of Pakistan.

 “They cannot decide the member's name on their own. It is not their choice, but of the party. If they request me to send someone, we will decide and let them know,” West Bengal Chief Minister and the Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee said on Monday, even as she reaffirmed her party’s support to the Union Government in combating terrorism sponsored by Pakistan or any other issues related to the foreign relations of India.

Yusuf Pathan, a TMC member in the Lok Sabha, was invited by the Union Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs to join one of the seven all-party delegations that the government would send around the world to expose Pakistan’s support to terrorism and to articulate India’s message of zero tolerance to the menace.

He was invited to join the delegation, which would be led by Sanjay Jha of the Janata Dal (United) and would visit Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and Singapore.

 Pathan, who was elected to the Lok Sabha on a TMC ticket from Baharampur in West Bengal, however, decided against joining the delegation.

The BJP accused the TMC supremo of forcing the cricketer-turned-politician to opt out of the delegation being sent by the Union Government.

 “West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s decision to force the TMC MP to withdraw from the multi-party delegation is unfortunate,” senior BJP leader Amit Malviya, who oversees the party’s affairs in West Bengal, said.

He pointed out that the delegations were being sent out by the Government of India, and it should have been kept above partisan politics. “It sends a subliminal message that Mamata Banerjee and her party are unwilling to speak out against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism (in India).”

Mamata, however, said that none from the Union Government contacted the TMC. “It is wrong to say that we are boycotting or not going. They need to inform the party.”

 “We strongly condemn the way Pakistan is supporting terrorism to disrupt peace in India. That should be raised at the global stage,” Abhishek Banerjee, the general secretary of the TMC, said in Kolkata, but added that it was the prerogative of the TMC to decide on its representative in such delegations.

“If they (the government) still ask for names (of TMC representatives to join the delegations), I am ready to send them in an hour. They (the party’s representatives) are not nominated at the mercy of the ruling dispensation at the Centre; they have been elected by the people.”

Abhishek, himself a LS member, also suggested that the BJP-led Union Government should consider including in the delegations the members of the families of the victims of terrorism, or the survivors, or the officers of the armed forces, who led the “Operation Sindoor”, as they would be able to expose Pakistan’s blatant support to terrorism against India.

The Congress also conveyed its displeasure after the Union Government had not picked up any of the four parliamentarians it suggested for inclusion in the delegations being sent to the foreign capitals to brief about the April 22 carnage in Jammu and Kashmir by a gang of Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists and the subsequent cross-border military offensives and counter-offensives between India and its western neighbour.

The Centre instead chose Shashi Tharoor, a Congress member in the Lok Sabha, to lead the delegation to the United States.