'Don’t insult me like this,' Mamata tells Modi as row over meeting escalates

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi a day after a controversy over a meeting between the two leaders to review the damage from Cyclone Yaas.

Sources in the central government said on Friday (May 28) that Mamata had “skipped” the meeting chaired by Modi, adding no one from the West Bengal government was there to receive the PM when he arrived at  Kalaikunda Air Base in  West Midnapur district. The CM also made Modi and Governor Jagdeep Dhankar wait for more than 30 minutes, they said.

No state official was allowed to make a presentation to Modi and the soft copy remained loaded on the screen without being used, while the CM rushed in and out of the meeting after giving some papers to the PM, they said.

The CM is “callous, arrogant and supremely unmindful of the welfare of the people of her state” and has dealt “an unprecedented blow to propriety and federalism” with her  behaviour, the government said on Friday (May 28).

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“Don’t insult me like this. We have got a landslide victory. Is that why you are behaving like this? You tried everything and lost. Why are you quarrelling with us every day?” said Mamata on Saturday (May 29).

“I had made plans to visit cyclone-hit areas. I had to travel to Sagar and Digha to see the damage caused by Cyclone Yaas. All my plans were made and ready… then suddenly we get a call that prime minister wants to visit Bengal to assess the situation after the cyclone,” she said.

Mamata alleged that Modi had called the meeting only to settle political scores and invited the opposition, which included the BJP and Dhankhar – a departure from similar cyclone review meetings he had held in Odisha and Gujarat recently.

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Mamata contested the central government’s claim that she made the PM and the governor wait for 30 minutes, saying it was she who had to wait for the PM on the tarmac for 20 minutes.

“By the time we reached the place where the PM-CM meeting was to be held, we found out that the PM had already arrived there some time ago and that there was a meeting going on. We were asked to wait outside. We waited patiently for a while. Then, when we asked again, we were told that no one can enter for the next one hour,” she said.