Govt did not receive any clearance request for Mamata Banerjee’s visit to Chicago: MEA

The external affairs ministry said reports of denying permission to Mamata Banerjee to visit Chicago were not true.

The external affairs ministry on Wednesday dismissed reports that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was denied permission to visit Chicago to attend the world Hindu conference.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had said she could not go to Chicago because of “an unholy conspiracy hatched by certain people”. (HT File Photo)

Spokesperson of the ministry Raveesh Kumar said the government did not receive any request for clearance for her visit.

“We did not receive any request for clearance regarding the visit of Ms Mamata Banerjee to Chicago for the event. The reports about the denial of permission are, therefore, not true,” he said in response to a question on the reports.

The West Bengal chief minister had Wednesday said, “I wanted to go to Chicago... I could not go there because of an unholy conspiracy hatched by certain people. This incident has given me a lot of pain.”

She had made the comment at a gathering in Belur Math, the global headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, to mark 125th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s historic speech at the Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Chicago.