NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam has rejected West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s allegation that she was not allowed to speak during the Aayog’s 9th Governing Council meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday.
Speaking to a news agency, Subrahmanyam narrated the sequence of events involving Chief Minister Banerjee and said that the West Bengal Chief minister had been requested to speak before lunch.
“We had 10 absentees and 26 participants. We had absentees from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Bihar, Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Puducherry. The Chief Minister of West Bengal was present. The Chief Minister of West Bengal had made a request to be given a turn before lunch time. I’m just putting facts on the ground, no interpretations,” the NITI Aayog CEO stated.
He further said: “It was a very clear request from their side because normally we would have gone alphabetically. So it begins with Andhra Pradesh, then Arunachal Pradesh…We actually adjusted and the Defence Minister actually called her in just before Gujarat. So she made her statement. Every chief minister is allotted seven minutes and there’s just a clock on top of the screen which tells you the time that is remaining.”
Claiming that Chief Minister Banerjee was given her allotted time, Subrahmanyam said the Bengal CM left after conveying that she wanted to speak more.
“So it goes from seven to six to five to four to three. At the end of that, it shows zero. Zero. Nothing else. Nothing else has happened other than that…Then she said look, I would have liked to speak for more time, but I’ll not speak anymore. That was it. There was nothing more. We all heard,” he added.
After walking out of the NITI Ayog meeting abruptly, Chief Minister Banerjee earlier today claimed that her microphone was switched off and she was not given more than five minutes, whereas Andhra Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu was given 29 minutes and some BJP CMs also spoke for about 10-12 minutes.
“I was the only one from the opposition who was participating but still, I was not allowed to speak and the mike was muted…This is insulting, and I’ll not attend any meeting further,” Chief Minister Banerjee said while speaking to reporters in New Delhi.
Shortly after her media statement, the Government of India’s nodal agency, Press Information Bureau (PIB) fact-checked her claim, stating the clock showed her alloted time to speak was over.
“This claim is Misleading The clock only showed that her speaking time was over. Even the bell was not rung to mark it,” the PIB said.
It further added: “Alphabetically, CM, West Bengal turn would have come after lunch. She was accommodated as the 7th speaker on an official request of the West Bengal government as she had to return early.”
Notably, Banerjee was the only CM from the opposition-ruled states as others boycotted the meeting over alleged discrimination in allocation of the Union Budget 2024.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Kerala Chief Minister and CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, and the Congress Chief Ministers of Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and Telangana were the notable absentees from the meeting.