Mamata Banerjee has accused an “insecure” Narendra Modi of not letting her or other chief ministers speak at an online meeting on the Covid crisis he held with several heads of state governments and district magistrates on Thursday morning.

With the Bengal chief minister getting a chance to interact with the Prime Minister for the first time since winning an acrimonious election against his party and amid a Covid emergency, she had come prepared to speak her mind on the Centre’s management of the epidemic.

“(But) no two-way communication or consultation (took place); only one-way insultation,” Mamata told a news conference after the meeting, which she had attended along with some of her top bureaucrats.

“One nation, all humiliation…. More than a dictatorship, feels like martial law is in place in this nation,” she added.

“It felt really bad to see the Prime Minister feeling so insecure that he didn’t even want to listen to the chief ministers. Why such great fear? Why such neglect? Who is to answer? The Prime Minister hid his face, ran away.”

Mamata said what she felt “most bad” about was her inability to raise the state’s demands and concerns after having made considerable preparations ahead of the meeting, where she was a formal invitee.

She said she would have liked to speak about the supply of vaccines, medicines and oxygen, and about the concerns over the deadly “black fungus” that is infecting ailing or recovered Covid patients.

Narendra Modi during the earlier online interaction from New Delhi on Thursday. PTI

“The country is passing through a critical juncture but the Prime Minister is very casual…. He wanted to get some publicity through the media, which is why he expressed his opinion without allowing others, the chief ministers, to speak,” Mamata said.

“Bengal, Maharashtra, Kerala — are we bonded labour or are we puppets? Only ‘his master’s voice’ matters, and the Opposition does not matter?”

She added: “He (Modi) picked a handful of district magistrates, mostly from BJP-ruled states. He then gave his own lecture and ended it (the meeting). Even that lecture we didn’t understand. A Prime Minister meeting chief ministers on Covid-19, (and yet) so casual? It was just a casual, super-flop meeting.”

Mamata went on: “We, the chief ministers, are feeling insulted and humiliated. We are astonished to see that the Prime Minister called a meeting, invited the chief ministers, and all the chief ministers were made to sit like puppets. Nobody was allowed to speak.”

The Trinamul chief minister lambasted Modi for suggesting the second wave of Covid was subsiding.

“He gave a lecture saying Covid-19 is reducing. If that were true, then how are so many deaths taking place across the country? It’s because of this same negligence that the second wave became this devastating. Nothing was done for six months; eight-phase elections were forced on Bengal,” she said.

Mamata iterated her demand for free, universal immunisation against Covid for every Indian citizen, underscoring the Modi government’s apparent reluctance about such a measure.

“We kept saying Rs 30,000 crore would have been enough to ensure free, universal immunisation for all Indians. But no, they are instead making huge buildings (the controversial Central Vista), statues for themselves.... But young boys and girls continue to die,” she said.

“We were never allowed to ask about the countless bodies floating in the rivers. Namami Gange (a flagship programme of the Modi government to reduce pollution and rejuvenate the Ganga)? It’s now mrityupuri (house of death) Ganga, thanks to them…. (They) polluted the whole nation, poisoned its environment,” she added.

“The king, the emperor, the shahenshah (king of kings) in Delhi, he will not even look at the people and declare everything is fine…. People are dying and they (the Centre) are still carrying on with their total negligence, arising out of audacious pride. I don’t know how long this can go on.”

Mamata took a dig at Modi’s appeal to all Indians last year to clap their hands and bang on plates to drive the coronavirus away.

“They are now claiming that the outbreak is reducing. Any day now, he will say ‘Ring bells, Covid-19 will reduce further’,” she said. “Not one permanent solution or a quest for it. No action.”

Mamata has been complaining to her aides for the past few days that the Modi government is not being forthcoming in extending support to the states in their battle against Covid.

She has been accusing the Centre of trying to deflect attention from the Covid emergency, referring to recent developments such as governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s comments on the post-poll violence, visits by central teams, and the CBI’s arrest of two of her ministers in the Narada case.

On Thursday, she raised the subject of the Centre’s relentless efforts to browbeat her newly formed government.

“You all can see what is going on even after the polls. In the name of post-poll violence, central teams are being sent. Are these teams sent to Uttar Pradesh, when countless bodies are thrown into the rivers? Are central teams being sent to see the stock of vaccines, of oxygen?” she said.

Mamata has been alleging that these actions stem from the BJP’s inability to digest the crushing poll defeat in Bengal after its high-voltage, polarising campaign and the spending of “thousands of crores” to win the state.

Asked if she was looking to lead a pan-India platform of non-BJP forces in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls of 2024, Mamata said her priority now was fighting Covid.

“I hope there will be a pan-India team: a team that will raise its voice against the BJP’s autocracy; a team that will take on dictatorship with democracy,” she said.

“Whoever takes a stand can and will do so. When they want to speak, they are free to speak to me.”

The BJP central leadership fielded Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to answer Mamata.

“This behaviour is shameful, is condemnable and least expected from a chief minister of a big state in a meeting called by the Prime Minister,” Prasad said.

He said Modi had been interacting with district magistrates to learn how they were combating the epidemic so that the best practices could be replicated elsewhere.

“What is the problem if the Prime Minister wants to interact with district magistrates?” Prasad said.

He said it was “very, very unfair” of Mamata to attend the meeting and then “seek to derail” it.

Prasad did not explain how Mamata could have sought to “derail” the meeting without a chance to speak.

“Nothing better can be expected from Mamataji,” he said.