Chief ministers not allowed to speak at PM Modi's Covid-19 meeting, alleges Mamata Banerjee

BJP reels out data to says Mamata "rarely" attends PM meetings

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with district magistrates of 54 of 100 districts with highest Covid loads got into a political row with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee saying she felt "insulted" at seeing that "CMs were made to sit like puppets" at the "casual" meeting in which only the PM and some BJP CMs made small speeches.

This was the second of such meetings after the Prime Minister had interacted with district magistrates of 46 districts from nine states including Karnataka on Tuesday.

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Soon after the meeting that was held through video conferencing, Banerjee said, "This was a casual and super flop meeting. Only CMs of BJP-ruled states were allowed to speak and others were reduced to puppets. We feel insulted and humiliated. This is an attempt to bulldoze the federal structure of the country. PM Modi is so insecure that he did not listen to us."

Reacting sharply to it, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad called Banerjee's conduct after the meeting as "shameful, indignified, condemnable and least expected from the Chief Minister of a large state like West Bengal".

Reeling out data, Prasad alleged that "Mamata Banerjee rarely attends meetings called by the Prime Minister" and when she does it like on Thursday she "tried to disrupt" it.

"Nothing can explain this better. The Prime Minister had called a meeting of CMs on March 17 in the middle of the election campaign in Bengal, when it was felt that the nation needs to be addressed in wake of the surge in the numbers of Corona in Maharashtra. Mamata ji did not attend it. Barring one or two (ek aadh), Banerjee did not attend meetings held even earlier. We have data.

"On May 14, when the Prime Minister held a meeting on infrastructure, she did not participate, Mamata Banerjee did not come for the meeting on the land bill. In 2019 Mamata ji also did not participate in the governing body meeting of NITI or the other one on the one nation one election meeting the same year. She does not attend the meetings of the Prime Minister but today she wants to create disturbance in the meeting," Prasad said.

The BJP leader also alleged that Banerjee did not allow even the District Magistrate of 24 Paragnas of her state to speak, saying she knows more than the DM.

"This is very unfortunate for a Chief Minister to engage in this kind of undignified conduct in a meeting called by the Prime Minister. And she is not doing it for the first time. I want to ask Mamata ji, what is her problem if the PM of India is seeking to know about best practices done in their districts by the DMs in the country. Why this should not happen. We know a number of districts have done good work. Modi is concerned about the political colour of the state in which such districts are located. Wherever the best practices are, they should be appreciated," Prasad insisted.

Ruing that today when the country should fight the war against the pandemic, such conduct is painful, Prasad said, "there is still time, talk about people rising over politics. It is very necessary to have one voice. Mamata ji please look within is your conduct today proper?

Mamata's close aide and BJP leader Suvendi Adhikari, who defeated her from Nandigram in the recently concluded Assembly, attacked her saying the CM has once again shown her total disinterest in administration.

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Adhikari said "true to her style, she has politicised a meeting the Prime Minister held with district officials, where grassroots level practices to fight Covid-19 were being discussed."

Countering her charge that Opposition CMs were not allowed to speak, Adhikari said, "5 out of the 7 District Officials who spoke today belonged to non-BJP ruled states of Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Cooperative federalism is the firm commitment of PM Narendra Modi unlike CM Mamata Banerjee, who only believes in confrontational federalism."

He rued that while west Bengal’s Covid numbers are miserable, but the Chief Minister wants to play politics, "TMC is still busy in gory victory dances and targeting opponents" and suggested "it is better they get down to work because the great People of West Bengal are watching!"

Banerjee, however, said the prime minister neither asked how West Bengal is handling the Covid situation nor if the state has enough stock of vaccines and oxygen. "There was not a single question from the PM about the 'black fungus'," she said.

This was the second time the Prime Minister's meetings with Chief Ministers got on to a discordant note. Earlier on April 23, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had gone public with his remarks in a meeting, asking whether the people of Delhi do not have right to the nation's resources equally. His comments that he finds himself helpless in arranging oxygen for patients, had sparked a row.

Banerjee and Kejriwal are two Opposition Chief Ministers, who have often run into a row with the Centre.

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On the contrary, the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh in an official statement after the meeting said its strategy to tackle the coronavirus situation in the state has been appreciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who asked other states to take similar steps.

Chief Minister and officials from Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh were present in the meeting.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister took note of the growing concerns about the possibility of greater infection risk to youngsters and kids in future and asked the district magistates to collect data on Covid infection and the impact due to coronavirus mutations on them.

Calling the virus "dhoort" (cunning) and "bahurupiya" (one who changes face), Modi called for dynamic and innovative strategy to fight the pandemic, which he said needs constant updation.

In the meeting, Modi was keen to take steps to check vaccine wastage saying even single dose going waste denies someone protection shield. Noting that active cases have started to reduce in recent times, Modi said the challenge remains as long as this infection is present even on the minor scale.

He stressed the need to use local experiences to check the pandemic and urged the need to amplify the message of keeping villages Corona-free by devising strategy in a rural and urban specific way.

"Every epidemic has taught us the importance of continuous innovation and change in our ways of dealing with epidemics. The methods and strategies in dealing with the pandemic should be dynamic as the virus is expert in mutation and changing the format," Modi said.