Five days after her party withdrew its support to the United Progressive Alliance government, Trinamool Congress chairperson and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the Centre on Wednesday of adopting a “vindictive attitude.”
She said this when asked by journalists here for her comments on the decision to shift the venue of a global partnership summit of investors from Kolkata to Agra.
Ms. Banerjee, however, said that her government had not receive any information regarding “the holding or shifting of the venue.”
“They [the Centre] have a vindictive attitude towards us, so they are saying such things,” Ms. Banerjee said.
Her remarks come in the wake of reports that Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has written to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav requesting him to host the summit.
It had been decided in November, when Mr. Sharma had come to the city, that the event to be jointly organised by the Union Commerce Ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) would be held in Kolkata.
The State’s Industries Minister, Partha Chatterjee, said that he would take up the matter of shifting the venue of the summit with the CII.
He wondered how it could be held in Agra when the event was to have been in conformity with the Look East policy of the Centre.
In another development, Ms. Banerjee requested the Centre to reduce the price of fertilizers as the country’s farmers could hardly afford it.
In her Facebook page, while referring to her meeting with Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar here earlier in the day, she wrote: “In this meeting, I had given some proposals for consideration of the Central government. My request was to reduce the increased price of fertilizers which our farmers cannot afford. As a result, nutrition-based fertilizers are not being used by the farmers.”
“I had also suggested that agriculture sector also have a ‘single window system,’ as we have introduced in the industrial sector. This will help the farmers in a big way, so that they are not harassed to make repeated visits to various organisations like banks, financial institutions, fertilizer and food departments, etc” Ms. Banerjee said.
