New Delhi : Before meeting to PM Modi, as usual to maintain good relation, she sent Bengali sweets and gift which she brought from Kolkata to PM after she landed in Delhi, according to sources. “How are your feet”? PM asked her at the first good wish exchanged at the meeting. Modi inquired about Bengal CM’s health at face-to-face meeting.
The Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had a 25-minute-long meeting with PM Narendra Modi at his new parliament building office on December 20 in New Delhi over cessation of funds under several central schemes to the state. CM Mamata, who was accompanied by nine Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs, including her nephew and party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, later said Modi gave them a “patient” hearing and has suggested that two officials from each side, the Union and the state governments, discuss the problem to arrive at a solution.
After the meeting with duo, Central Government send GST dues to all state government including West Bengal. Mamata has met Modi thrice on this dues to state issue and written numerous letters to him, but the central funds remain withheld. PM asked to Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s team, as she told to media, that there might have been some discrepancies over the funds received by Bengal so far, an allegation on the basis of which the funds were stopped, she said, the Centre was free to stop the funds wherever there had been misappropriation, if any. She said, when addressing to Media at Vijay Chowk, “But it is not good to stop poor people’s funds/dues”. She argued, “As many as 155 teams have visited Bengal, and we have given all clarifications but got nothing”.
In a 3-page memorandum submitted to the prime minister, Bengal CM claimed “nearly Rs 1.16 lakh crore” worth of funds under ‘core of the core’ social schemes like MNREGA, PMAY, PM Gram Sadak Yojana and the National Health Mission. As if handing out a fig leaf, she even sounded complimentary of Modi’s tenure as the chief minister of Gujarat. “As chief minister of an important state and in that capacity, you (Modi) had fought for the rights of the state and its people in our federal structure,” she has written in the Memorandum.
“We raised these issues with the prime minister, and PM said a joint meeting will be held between the officers of the Centre and Bengal. If any clarification is required, we will give it again despite doing so 155 times already. Two officers each from the state and Centre will sit and find a solution,” Mamata said. She added that Sudip Bandyopadhyay, leader of the TMC’s parliamentary party in the Lok Sabha, had asked for a timeline to be determined for the meeting and PM Modi had agreeda to it.
The political experts are saying, the gesture of the courtesy shouldn’t be mistaken as a ceasefire. If the Centre releases the funds after this meeting, the TMC plans to project it as a victory earned by its top leader. Otherwise, the cessation of funds will be a key campaign issue against the BJP in the ensuing Loksabha Election. Hours before Mamata and her colleagues were to meet Modi, the BJP’s leader of the Opposition in the Bengal assembly, wrote to the prime minister and raised their concerns about “innumerous irregularities and unabated financial scams and unbridled corruption in West Bengal, which has led to wastage and siphoning of thousands of crores of central government funds” provided to the state to implement central government schemes.
BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari also called upon Bengal chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi with multiple complaints regarding the implementation of central schemes. Later, he raised question and posted on X handle, “When the Chief Minister of WB is raking up the issue of Cooperative Federalism in New Delhi, why is her Govt & Administration shying away from Cooperative Governance in Bengal”? At the end, victims of Bengal are optimistic that PM Modi will must react to ‘Didis meeting”.
