New Delhi: Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday skipped a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to assess the impact of Cyclone Yaas, choosing instead a quick 15-minute interaction with him at an airbase where his flight landed. She was to attend a cyclone damage review with PM Modi but left after handing him a report.
This was their first face-to-face since the acrimonious Bengal election campaign and Mamata Banerjee’s third straight victory.
The centre has issued an order to recall West Bengal’s top bureaucrat from the state on a day a row broke out over a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay’s tenure was extended for three months only four days ago, before Friday’s order to recall him to the centre came.
The centre has asked Bengal to send Bandyopadhyay to the Department of Personnel and Training’s office in Delhi by May 31 morning.
A day after West Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay was shifted from his services under the state government to the Centre, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) said on Friday that the Centre’s decision to seek the services of Alapan Bandyopadhyay was because the people of the state gave an overwhelming mandate to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, calling it ‘vindictive politics’ and ‘forced central deputation.’
