West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee has chosen to skip the 10th Governing Council meeting of NITI Aayog in Delhi on Saturday, reportedly because she was forced to cut short her speech in the last meeting. The meeting, which is currently underway, is being chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by Opposition chief ministers from Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh, who had skipped the last meeting.
Sources close to Mamata said she decided not to attend Saturday’s meeting as NDA-led states got more than 15 minutes to speak during the last time, but she was given only five minutes.
State administration sources said it is not clear whether West Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Pant is attending the meeting. TMC sources added that Mamata is hardening her stand against the BJP-led central government ahead of next week’s Bengal visit by PM Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
On Friday, the TMC joined the call by Opposition parties for a special Parliament session to discuss the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor. In a post on X, Mamata said the Centre should convene a session as soon as the all-party delegations – sent across to put forward India’s stand – return. “I believe the people of this great nation have the foremost right to be informed about the recent conflict and the evolving developments – BEFORE ANYONE ELSE,” she added.
Sharply criticising Mamata’s absence in the NITI Aayog meeting, BJP MP Samik Bhattacharya said, “The people of West Bengal will be deprived if the chief minister does not attend the NITI Aayog meeting. West Bengal will move towards a more uncertain future. However, it was Mamata Banerjee’s last chance to be present for the meeting. In the Assembly election next year, she will be defeated and the new chief minister will attend the NITI Aayog meeting.”
CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty too slammed Mamata’s decision to skip the meeting. “This is nothing new. She is only interested in ‘Durniti (corruption) Aayog’. She never thinks about the state’s development,” he said.
After the NITI Aayog meeting in July last year, Mamata had said, “I was the only one who attended the meeting today because we believe that if cooperative federalism has to be protected, the share of the state’s funds taken by the Centre should be given to the state for development.”
“Nobody went as they boycotted [the meeting]. I thought I would go and speak for everyone. I spoke whatever I could in the 3-4 minutes – about Bengal’s deprivation and the way all Opposition-ruled states were deprived in the Budget, whereas considerations were given to BJP-ruled states and their allies,” she had said.
“While I was saying these things [in the meeting], they kept ringing the bell. Rajnath Singh presided over the meeting with the Prime Minister and Home Minister seated on either side. Obviously, they asked him to do this. Before me, Chandrababu Naidu spoke for 20 minutes. Assam, Arunachal, Chhattisgarh, and Goa CMs spoke between 15-20 minutes. But as soon as I hit five minutes, they kept hitting the bell and asked me to stop. I said, okay I will stop, and added that if they did not want to listen, I will leave. I boycotted and left because they did not want to hear about Bengal’s deprivation,” Mamata had stated.