'His voice will echo India's commitment to peace...', says TMC as Abhishek 'picked' for Centre's all-party delegation

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee will represent the party in one of the seven all-party delegations Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will send to foreign capitals to brief about Pakistan’s export of terror to India, the party supremo and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee decided on Tuesday.

Mamata decided to send Abhishek as the TMC representative after she received a phone call from Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju. Earlier, cricketer-turned-politician and a TMC member in the Lok Sabha, Yusuf Pathan, had opted out of one of the all-party delegations, as the party objected to his selection by the Union Government without consultation with its top brass.

The TMC will also send a five-member delegation to Srinagar, Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir from May 21 to 23 to express solidarity with the people affected by the recent cross-border military offensive by Pakistan in response to India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’.

“His voice will echo India’s commitment to peace, justice, & (and) global cooperation,” the TMC posted on X, after announcing the decision to nominate Abhishek as the party’s representative to join the all-party delegations for India’s global outreach against terrorism sponsored by Pakistan.

Pathan, a TMC member in the Lok Sabha, had been 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 had been 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.

The cricketer-turned-politician, elected to the Lok Sabha on a TMC ticket from Baharampur in West Bengal, however, had decided against joining the delegation.

Mamata and Abhishek had on Monday criticised the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party for selecting Pathan as a member of one of the all-party delegations the government had decided to send around the world to expose Pakistan’s support to terrorist organisations and its facilitations to the export of terror to India and beyond. They had argued that the TMC would always stand with the BJP-led Union Government shoulder-to-shoulder in the fight against terrorism and all other issues related to the external relations with India, but the Centre should not have decided on the party’s representative without consulting its leaders.

With the assembly elections in West Bengal just about a year away, the BJP, however, did not miss the opportunity to criticise the TMC for allegedly forcing Pathan to opt out of the delegation being sent by the Union Government. The saffron party alleged that Mamata and her TMC were not keen to speak out against anti-India cross-border terrorism coming out of Pakistan.

To blunt criticism by the BJP, Mamata on Tuesday decided to nominate her heir apparent, Abhishek, to represent the TMC in the all-party delegation instead of Pathan – albeit after a call from Rijiju.

The TMC also decided to send a delegation, comprising its leaders, Nadimul Haque, Sagarika Ghosh, Manas Bhunia, Mamata Thakur and Derek O’Brien, to J&K to stand by the people who lost their loved ones in the cross-border firing by Pakistan in response to India’s strikes on terrorist infrastructure in the neighbouring country.