Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee today asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to explain why the Centre wants to send teams to Bengal to examine violations and dilutions of the coronavirus lockdown. Two inter-ministerial teams had already landed in Kolkata hours before her tweets, aiming to visit seven districts, including state capital Kolkata, to investigate reports of lockdown rules being violated.In an angry letter to PM Modi, the Bengal Chief Minister wrote that while the Home Minister spoke to her around 1 pm to inform her about the visit, the teams had already landed in Kolkata airport at 10.10 am, “much before our conversation”.

The home ministry’s order on the teams’ visit also reached only 30 minutes before they arrived, she wrote, alleging a breach of protocol.

Ms Banerjee also protested allegations that the lockdown had been violated in Bengal and the situation was “specifically serious” in some districts. “The selection of districts and observations made unilaterally are nothing but figments of imagination and unfortunate,” she raged.

Insisting that her state had been ahead in announcing the lockdown and its extension, the Chief Minister said “such unilateral action on the part of the central government is not desirable at all”.

Earlier, she had tweeted that until the Prime Minister and the home minister shared why the decision was taken to send the teams, her state would not be able to cooperate.

The centre is believed to be concerned about reports of  “dilution” and “violation” of lockdown in Bengal; for example, sweet shops have been allowed to do business across the state, originally for four hours a day but later extended to eight hours. That changed today again. Both sweet shops and flower markets will now open only from 8 am to 12 noon.

Based on Intelligence reports, MHA had said in its letter of 10 April that markets are open and crowded, religious congregations have allegedly been allowed and there is crowding at ration shops where political leaders are distributing rations.

Following that alert, on 17 April, Mamata Banerjee did crack the whip and told the police that police should be deployed at marketplaces to ensure there was no crowding and the lockdown should be enforced more strongly than before. Religious congregations were banned by the state but there have been a couple of gatherings that the police had to disperse.

The teams have been assigned to.visit Kolkata, Howrah, Midnapore East, 24 Parganas North, Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. The state government has to provide accommodation, travel.