Mamata Banerjee storms out of NITI Aayog meeting after her speech was 'cut short'; Sitharaman says 'not true'

Reiterating her demand for scrapping of NITI Aayog, she said it has no financial powers and the question is how it will work. 'Give it financial powers or bring back the Planning Commission', the Bengal CM demanded.

New Delhi: The NITI Aayog meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday witnessed high drama after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stormed out of the deliberations, claiming that she was “unfairly” stopped five minutes into her speech, triggering a war of words between the ruling NDA and the Opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called the allegations of switching off Mamata’s mic as “unfortunate” while asking her to “speak the truth rather than build a narrative based on falsehood”. She said Mamata could have sought for more time to wind up her speech like some other Chief Ministers had done but she chose to “use this as an excuse” to get out of the meeting.

Incidentally, none of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc Chief Ministers, including Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren who Mamata claimed would attend, joined her in the meeting on 'Viksit Bharat @ 2047', and stuck to the decision of boycotting it. No ministers were also sent as state representatives even as Mamata had claimed that there was no prior consultation in I.N.D.I.A. on the issue.

At a meeting of I.N.D.I.A. last Tuesday after the presentation of the Budget, floor leaders were asked to urge their party leadership to boycott the meeting. However, the Trinamool Congress later took a different route saying one need not be a “photocopy” of another party, but appeared isolated among the Opposition states on the issue.

Mamata said she “boycotted” the 9th Governing Council meeting when she was not allowed to complete her speech even as she called for restoring the Planning Commission and criticised the government for “discriminating” against Opposition-ruled states in Budget allocations.

“I have boycotted the meeting. Chandrababu Naidu was given 20 minutes to speak. Chief Ministers of Assam, Goa and Chhattisgarh spoke for 10-12 minutes. I was stopped after just five minutes … My mic was stopped. This is unfair,” she told reporters.

However, the PIB Fact Check Unit posted on ‘X’, “This claim is misleading. The clock only showed that her speaking time was over. Even the bell was not rung to mark it.”

NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam said that Mamata's request to speak before lunch was accepted, although her turn would have come in the afternoon going in the alphabetical order of the states.

I.N.D.I.A. leaders came out in Mamata’s support with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin and Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh targeting the government over the way an Opposition Chief Minister was treated, while several BJP leaders accused the West Bengal Chief Minister of creating drama.

Mamata said she was the only one from the Opposition attending the meeting because of the greater aim that cooperative federalism be strengthened. “Even the Budget was politically biased. If you give some special package to some states, I do not have a problem. But I asked why are you discriminating against other states,” she said.

She said her microphone was switched off when she spoke about discrimination towards West Bengal and other states.

“I said why did you stop me, why are you discriminating. I am attending the meeting and you should be happy … This is not only an insult to Bengal but also to all regional parties,” she said at the meeting while reiterating her demand for scrapping the NITI Aayog, which has “no financial powers”. “Give it financial powers or bring back the Planning Commission,” she said.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin was the first to announce the I.N.D.I.A. bloc boycott, followed by three Congress Chief Ministers—Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Telangana's A Revanth Reddy and Himachal Pradesh's Sukhwnder Singh Sukhu—protesting against what they called a “discriminatory” Union Budget.

Soren, Bhagwant Mann (Punjab) and Pinarayi Vijayan (Kerala) also did not attend while Delhi decided not to send any minister to represent Arvind Kejriwal who is in judicial custody.