Sloganeering snowballs into major controversy as Mamata refuses to sit on dais at Railway function

Kolkata: Sloganeering at Howrah Station on Friday snowballed into a major controversy as a visibly annoyed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee refused to get up on the dais from where the Vande Bharat express to New Jalpaiguri was flagged off.

Banerjee seemed upset by the loud sloganeering of 'Jai Shri Ram’ by BJP workers present at the railway station.

Attempts by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and Governor C V Ananda Bose to pacify her did not bear fruit, as the chief minister chose to sit on a chair below the dais along with the audience.

Banerjee greeted the PM who appeared through a video conferencing link with a short speech from her seat and condoled the death of his mother Hiraben earlier in the day by stating, “Your mother is our mother too.” The Vande Bharat Express connecting Howrah and New Jalpaiguri, the gateway to the northeast, as well as several development projects, was virtually inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

However, the chants stirred up a political controversy with TMC taking exception to the mouthing of what they termed as a party slogan in a Government program made more solemn by the death of a family member of the Prime Minister and the BJP stating it was normal for their workers to be excited by an event which would inaugurated by the PM.

Later, after a metro rail ride, Railway minister Vaishaw downplayed the incident while speaking with newspersons at Taratala and said the chief minister had been invited with "aadar" (affection) and "samman" (respect). He said "aise koi baat nahi hui ke naraaz hone ki baat ho. Karyakarta naare lagate hai (Nothing occurred to cause any angst. Workers often mouth slogans)".

However, the TMC did not accept the excuse and a grim faced Chandrima Mukherjee, TMC leader and West Bengal’s minister of state for finance said, “The chief minister maintained her dignity especially at a difficult hour when the prime minister of the nation has been bereaved, but BJP workers kept leaping up and shouting forgetting the solemnity of the occasion.” 

BJP MP Locket Chatterjee too tried to play down the sloganeering which erupted when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appeared at Howrah station, stating it “was not meant to hurt her (chief minister). It was general sloganeering by the saffron party supporters in support of Prime Minister Modi.” 

Last year, Banerjee had similarly taken umbrage at a similar incident of sloganeering by BJP supporters at a Central Government function to celebrate Netaji Subhas Bose’s birth anniversary on January 23, at the Victoria Memorial hall here, protesting that the solemnity of the function was insulted by partisan slogans.