Bengal will help in building ‘Team India’: PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said West Bengal will help to build the spirit of ‘Team India’ that is needed to take the country forward.

“I am saying that without ‘Team India’, the country cannot progress. To take India forward, this land of Bengal will come to the country’s help,” Mr. Modi said in the presence of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the inauguration of a modernised IISCO Steel Plant here.

To take India forward in steel production, the West Bengal government had made this project successful and that, he said, was an example of the spirit of ‘Team India’ at work.

The prime minister said that had the state government not supported the endeavour to modernise the steel plant, the project would not have been possible.

Referring to the recent Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, Mr. Modi said he was proud that the states of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura had worked with Delhi in addressing the vexed issue which had been lying unsolved for the past 41 years, since the time of Mujibur Rahman.

“Mamata’s government from West Bengal, (other governments from) Assam and Tripura, worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Delhi to solve this. For the first time, we can be proud of the fact that Parliament, whether it is Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha showed no opposition (on the issue),” the prime minister said.

“Team India is the Centre and states working together. If there is ‘Team India’, then we can solve international issues and internal ones very easily”.