Mamata Banerjee to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow

Kolkata

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow to seek an interest waiver on the repayment of huge debt.

“I shall meet the PM tomorrow to secure our rights. I am not going to Delhi seeking alms. The state should get its rights,” she said today while inaugurating a flyover on the VIP Road on way to the airport for Delhi.

Banerjee is accompanied by a delegation comprising, among others, Finance Minister Amit Mitra and Chief Secretary Sanjay Mitra.

“We have waited for over three-and-a-half years and had given a test of our patience. We have already paid over Rs 1 lakh crore debt so far. Also, we waited so long till the reccommendation of the 14th Finance Commission,” she said.

On February 25, Banerjee had written to the Prime Minister seeking an appointment and urging him to consider the debt waiver immediately.

“We have long been pursuing with the Centre for a waiver of the huge debt burden left upon us by the previous government in West Bengal. We have waited for more than three-and-a-half years with no results,” the Chief Minister said.

She said the deduction of about Rs 28,000 crore every year towards repayment of loans taken by the previous government has been increasing.

In an apparent message to some rebel leaders in her party, Banerjee said, “Those who do not work, only get themselves involved in conspiracy,” while calling upon her party colleagues and workers to help expedite all development works in the state.

Banerjee inaugurated a two-km-long Rs 313-crore flyover between Krishnapur and Raghunathpur over Baguiati.

Once a loyalist of former Party General Secretary Mukul Roy, Sabyasachi Dutta, MLA from Rajarhat, was with the CM right from the inauguration of flyover to the airport. Dutta even touched her feet before she left for Delhi.

Mamata’s meeting with Modi a desperate measure to save TMC

Even as Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today departed for Delhi to meet the Prime Minister over the debt waiver issue, the CPI-M today described the proposed meeting as a ‘desperate’ move to wriggle out of the CBI pincer on the Saradha issue.

Terming the West Bengal government as a “scamster Trinamool Congress” government, CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat said, “Whereever you see, you will find only scam and corruption, whether its Saradha or any other chit fund scam. The footprints of Trinamool Congress in these scams are clear.”

The CPI-M, which kicked off its 24th State Conference at a mammoth rally organized at the historic Brigade Parade ground, lashed out at the TMC regime for paving the way for the ‘communal’ BJP in the state.

The party’s central committee member, Mohammed Salim, alleged that before the Lok Sabha elections the TMC supremo had said she would tie a rope around the waist of Narendra Modi for spiraling communal violence.

“But now she is going to meet him just nine months after she spoke those lines. Actually, now a competition is on within the TMC among Mukul Roy and Mamata Banerjee,” he pointed out.

“Mukul Roy has saved himself from the CBI by singing tunes in favour of Narendra Modi and the BJP. Now Mamatadi is also following in his footsteps in order to save her party from the CBI,” Salim said.

“Both TMC and BJP are showing that they are political adversaries in Bengal. But in New Delhi they are joining hands,” Salim said.

Salim claimed that it was the Left which fought tooth and nail in the Supreme Court for a CBI investigation into the Saradha scandal.

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