Mamata Banerjee said she had not raised the Centre’s citizenship thrusts at a meeting chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah in Bhubaneswar on Friday but had expressed her sadness over the communal violence in Delhi.
The Bengal chief minister didn’t have a one-on-one meeting with Shah in the Odisha capital as she had planned earlier.
Apart from Mamata, her Odisha and Bihar counterparts, Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar, respectively, attended the Eastern Zonal Council meet presided over by Shah.
“Before the meeting, I said once, ‘See, please excuse me, but I have to express my sadness at what happened in Delhi. Bringing peace back,it is very important’. The victim families, helping them is a must. A constable and an IB official died. Other people died. Helping everyone is very important,” Mamata said in an interaction with journalists in Bhubaneswar after the meeting and a lunch that followed at Patnaik’s residence.
Friday’s public appearance was the first by Shah since the riot erupted in the national capital.
“And (I said) that in any part of the nation, ‘if there is a problem, there is continuation, impact of that in every part of the country. This should not happen. You (Shah) must see to it that peace prevails in the country.’ This I said at the very beginning,” said Mamata.
Asked if Shah had said anything in response, Mamata said: “No, he did not say anything. He stuck to the agenda.”
The Trinamul Congress chief said there were no discussions on a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) at the session.“No, there was no discussion on NRC… they never raised the issue, so we never raised the issue. Whatever issue was raised we discussed that,” she said.
“But NRC, NPR, CAA, none of that was in the agenda. They did not raise any of that, we did not either. This meeting was not for that,” she added later.
“In the meeting, we made it clear that state governments are elected, the Centre is also elected. There should be no khabardari on anything. Everything must be according to the Constitution.”
The Bengal chief minister said more of the discussions at the meeting were on matters pertaining to railways, coal, civil aviation, GST and dues from the Centre.
Repeatedly asked whether Shah had raised any law and order issue, Mamata said: “None.”
Sources said although the Bengal chief minister had remained keen on a one-on-one meeting with Shah, he did not accommodate it.
“There was no one-on-one meeting or a separate discussion. The four of us (Mamata, Shah, Naveen and Nitish) were together,” said Mamata, who has been in Odisha since Tuesday evening, over which she has been mocked by the Congress and the Left Front.
Asked if Mamata was in agreement with the national Opposition’s demand for Shah’s resignation, she said: “See, I don’t have to reply to every question you ask. I will reply to only those things that I have to speak about…. We want the problem to be solved first. Politics can be discussed after that.”
Union petroleum and steel minister Dharmendra Pradhan was also at the lunch. Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren skipped the meeting.
Asked how the food was, Mamata said she did not usually have lunch. “But out of respect to the other chief ministers and the Union home minister… Naveenji invited, so I came. I had a bit of the raita. It was good. Food of Odisha and our food are all the same,” she said.
The Congress and the Left derided Mamata over the meeting and her silence on the BJP’s citizenship matrix spearheaded by Shah.
“A samjhauta baithak (a meeting of compromise). While the whole country demands Shah’s resignation, Mamata not only was in Odisha for four days to attend today’s meeting with him but also refused to echo such demands,” Adhir Chowdhury, the Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha, said on the sidelines of a rally in Calcutta protesting the Delhi violence.
CPM central committee member Sujan Chakraborty alleged those were attempts by the Trinamul chief to shield herself against graft probes by central agencies.
