Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
Kolkata, May 29
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today called off her plan to attend Narendra Modi’s swearing-in on learning that family members of 50 BJP workers killed in West Bengal would attend the function. She had told the media yesterday she would attend the ceremony as “Constitutional courtesy.”
The BJP invited the families of its slain workers for the swearing-in on Thursday as a “gesture of respect to our martyrs”, party leader Mukul Roy said. “We would request the BJP and Narendra Modiji to see if jobs can be arranged for us,” said one of them.
A livid Mamata warned PM Modi against using the “august ceremony as an opportunity to score political points”. In a letter posted on Twitter this morning, she said: “There have been no political murders in Bengal. These deaths may have occurred due to personal enmity, family quarrels and other disputes; nothing related to politics. There is no such record with us.”
Congratulating the “new Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji”, she said she wanted to attend the oath ceremony, but the BJP’s claim on political murders had “compelled” her to change her mind.
The BJP claims to have lost more than 50 party workers at the hands of TMC goons since the panchayat elections in March last year. The BJP put up its best-ever show in West Bengal in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls, winning 18 of the 42 seats.
Don’t devalue ceremony: Didi
The ceremony is an august occasion to celebrate democracy and must not be devalued and used as an opportunity to score political points.
Another Trinamool MLA joins BJP
New Delhi: In another jolt to TMC, its MLA Monirul Islam on Wednesday joined the BJP, the third legislator to do so after the reverses it suffered in the Lok Sabha polls. Two TMC legislators and over 50 councillors joined the BJP on Tuesday. The BJP projected Islam’s decision to join the party as a vindication of PM Narendra Modi’s slogan of “sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas”. TNS
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2QGBwfn
via Today’s News Headlines
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