Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has criticised government-run think tank NITI Aayog for allegedly discriminating against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee by not allowing her to speak freely during a meeting of its Governing Council on Saturday.
Banerjee, the sole chief minister from an Opposition-ruled state to attend, had walked out of the gathering claiming that she was given “inadequate time to speak” and that her microphone was turned off within five minutes of her address.
Banerjee had said on Friday that she would attend the meeting to protest the “political discrimination being done with Bengal”.
The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam.
The Congress and Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party are allies in the Opposition INDIA bloc, which took on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha elections.
“[NITI Aayog] muzzles all divergent and dissenting viewpoints, which are the very essence of an open democracy,” Ramesh wrote in a post on X on Saturday. “Its meetings are a farce to be reckoned with. Its treatment of the West Bengal CM [chief minister] today, although typical of the NITI Aayog, is unacceptable.”
Banerjee alleged that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu was given 20 minutes to speak, while chief ministers from the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states of Assam, Goa and Chhattisgarh spoke for 10 to 12 minutes. The Telugu Desam Party is an ally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.
The Union government has described the West Bengal chief minister’s claim as misleading and denied that her microphone was cut off to prevent her from speaking.
Ramesh also said on Saturday: “Since it was established ten years ago, NITI Aayog has been an attached office of the PMO [prime minister’s office] and has functioned as a drumbeater for the non-biological PM.”
Ramesh was referring to Modi’s claim, made in an interview during the Lok Sabha polls on May 4, that he had not been “born biologically”.
“NITI Aayog has not advanced the cause of cooperative federalism in any manner,” Ramesh added. “Its functioning has been blatantly partisan, and it is anything but professional and independent.”
The NITI Aayog was constituted in 2015 to replace the 65-year-old Planning Commission. Banerjee had on Friday suggested that the NITI Aayog should be scrapped and the Planning Commission brought back.
Four chief ministers of Opposition-ruled states initially boycotted the think tank’s Governing Council meeting to protest the allegedly discriminatory Union Budget presented on July 23.
The chief ministers of nine states eventually skipped the meeting, reported PTI. These are Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Bihar, Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand. The lieutenant governor of Puducherry, too, did not attend.
The meeting was the ninth such gathering of the think tank’s Governing Council since its inception and the first following its reconstitution after the Lok Sabha election.
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