Mamata Banerjee surrounded by Left students in Kolkata, faces flak for meeting PM Modi

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is facing the wrath of the left and far-left unions for her “courtesy meet” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Raj Bhavan in Kolkata earlier today. The Trinmool Congress party chief was virtually surrounded on Saturday evening by a crowd of left students, who broke through police barricades to reach a sit-in demonstration against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by TMC’s student wing.

Mamata Banerjee had arrived at the protest venue moments ago after attending the 150th-anniversary celebrations of Kolkata Port Trust with PM Modi at Millennium Park near Howrah Bridge.

There was total chaos as the Left students were shouting their ‘Azadi’ slogans while Mamata and her supporters were raising their no-NRC slogans. Mamata seemed to be angry by the interruption caused by the Left students, most of them from Jadavpur University.

The left students are protesting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Kolkata and against the January 5 incident of violence at Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. The left has been accusing Mamata of having an understanding with Modi in private and adopting a different stand in public.

“She says something in the greenroom and something else on the stage. If her opposition to CAA and NRC was genuine, why didn’t she gather all her MPs in Lok Sabha during the voting on CAA? If she had to speak on debts, why weren’t the finance minister and finance secretary with her?” Communist Party of India (Marxist) politburo member Md. Salim asked on Saturday after Mamata called on Modi at the Raj Bhavan.

Mamata said she was bound by the “constitutional duty” to meet the PM if he visited Bengal.

“If the Prime Minister or President visits Bengal, it is my constitutional duty to meet them. As a courtesy, I met him. Minister Firhad Hakim greeted him at the airport,” Banerjee had told the media while leaving Raj Bhawan.

The left, however, persisted with its claim of a Mamata-Modi tacit understanding and questioned the timing of the TMC students’ wing’s sit-in demonstration against NRC and CAA.

“When students’ organisations all over India were on the streets, she did not ask her party’s student organisation to hit the streets. She asked them to organise a demonstration only after her private meeting with Modi had been finalised. She is playing a game,” Salim had said, hitting out at Mamata.