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Bengal CM Mamata calls on PM, flags BSF jurisdiction row and Tripura violence
Banerjee also announced that she will go to Mumbai to meet Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, and admitted that she didn’t seek time to meet Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee flagged the enhanced jurisdiction of the Border Security Force (BSF) as a disturbance to the country’s federal structure and invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inaugurate a business summit in Kolkata in her meeting with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader on Wednesday.
Banerjee also announced that she will go to Mumbai to meet Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, and admitted that she didn’t seek time to meet Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
Hours after her meeting with the PM, TMC delivered its biggest jolt yet to the Congress by poaching 12 of the latter's 18 legislators in Meghalaya.The visit marked a growing distance between the Congress and the TMC, two parties otherwise interested in a broader Opposition pact against the BJP in 2024.
Banerjee admitted that she didn’t seek time to meet Gandhi -- as first reported by HT -- and quipped, “They must be busy in Punjab election” before her sharp comment that it was not mandated in the Constitution that she must meet Gandhi.
“Giving more powers to the BSF leads to confrontation in law and order with the state police. We are not against the BSF. It is not right to disturb the federal structure without any reason,” she said, referring to the Centre’s decision last month to increase the jurisdiction of the BSF from 15km to 50km from the border.
The contentious amendment that will need Parliament’s approval puts roughly a third of the border state under the federal force.
She raised the issue of the recent clashes in Tripura with the PM. “A popular artist like Sayoni Ghosh (TMC’s youth wing leader) was arrested. I have raised the matter with the PM,” she said.
Though the BJP remains her biggest challenge in Bengal, she invited the PM for the first time for Bengal’s global business summit to be held next April. “He has accepted my invitation,” Banerjee said, “There are differences between political equations and the Centre-state relationship for development. The Centre will prosper only if the states prosper.”
This was Banerjee’s second meeting with PM Modi after trouncing the BJP in a high-octane assembly election in May.
She also defended her party’s Goa poll venture and said “every party has democratic right to contest” and made it clear that in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh polls, she is open to supporting Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. Banerjee also met BJP’s Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday.
She also explained her party’s expansion plan and said, “We have started working in Goa and Haryana. But I think some places, the regional parties (like SP) should fight. If Akhilesh Yadav want us to campaign, we will help”.
TMC leaders aware of developments said Banerjee’s visit to Mumbai was meant to recalibrate a possible alliance between Opposition parties ahead of the 2024 general elections in a way that the Congress party is not the fulcrum of the formation.
