Amit Shah calls Mamata Banerjee three hours after central team lands in Kolkata

A seething West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and took to Twitter on Monday to protest the visit of central teams without intimation to the state.

While the Centre has formed teams to review the situation in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh also, worse affected Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have been ignored. In terms of number of cases as well as fatality caused by COVID-19, West Bengal figures at number 13 among the states while Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh figure way above in the list.

But a central team landed at Kolkata on Monday at 10.10 am and proceeded to the BSF office. The same special cargo plane which flew them to Kolkata, then took off for Siliguri with the rest of the team, which put up in the guesthouse of the Intelligence Bureau. State Government officials were not asked for logistical support, as is normally the case.

The team in Kolkata, however, called on the Chief Secretary of the state on Monday evening after the chief minister had voiced her displeasure.

In her letter to the PM, Banerjee wrote, “ I would like to bring to your kind notice that today the Union Home Minister spoke to me over telephone at about 1pm regarding visit of Inter Ministerial Central Teams to my state. Unfortunately, the teams had already landed at Kolkata Airport by AI Special cargo Flight 1701 at 10.10am i.e. much before our telephonic conversation.”

“While I appreciate the pro-activeness shown by the central government in sending their teams to West Bengal, the same was done without prior intimation and hence is a breach of established protocol,” the chief minister wrote.

State Government sources maintained that the chief minister had raised valid questions as protocol suggests that visiting central teams accept the logistical arrangements made by the state government. “This is standard protocol and for this the state should have been informed much earlier to make the required arrangements for the teams,” one of them was quoted as saying.

BJP’s social media team and the IT Cell have been relentlessly criticizing the state government’s failures to enforce the lockdown. They have also alleged that the state government is hiding the actual number of cases and the actual number of deaths, prompting officials in Kolkata to quip that in that case, the Centre would be equally guilty.

The central team visiting South Bengal has an Additional Secretary from the Defence Ministry Apurva Chandra, NDMA Joint Secretary Ramesh Kumar Ganta, Public Health expert RR Pati, Consumers’ Affairs ministry representative Sitaram Meena and a Deputy Secretary in the Family Welfare Department JS Vikal.

The team sent to North Bengal is headed by HRD Additional Secretary Vineet Joshi and includes Public Health expert Shivani Dutta, Ajay Gangwar from NDMA, Dharmesh Makwana from Consumers’ Affairs ministry and N.B. Mani from the department of Health and Family Welfare.