On Day 2 of their Delhi protest for federal money, Mamata Banerjee’s party claimed that its MPs were “manhandled and mercilessly dragged” away by police.
According to the Trinamool Congress, who was protesting outside the Union Rural Development Ministry, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, the Minister of State, declined to meet with them, stating that she would only meet with up to five members.
“Today 02:30 hours was wasted. I left the office at 08:30 while waiting for the Trinamool MPs. According to my information, the delegation of Trinamool MPs and Bengal ministers had taken an appointment in the office at 06:00,” the Minister mentioned in a tweet.
“But later they wanted to meet presenting Trinamool workers as public, which was against the office system. They backed away from the scheduled topics of the meeting because the intention was not to meet but to do politics. This is a very shameful incident done by Trinamool leaders,” the Minister further added.
The Trinamool leaders would not leave until the Minister of Rural Development saw them; they had brought bundles of letters addressed to both the Prime Minister and the Minister.State cabinet members participated in a dharna that lasted till nine o’clock in the evening, led by Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee and a handful of party MPs.
“Ek MP ke saath aisa kar rahe hai aap log (You are doing this to an MP),” averred MP Mahua Moitra.
Abhishek Banerjee and other leaders may be seen being dragged away by police in videos taken at the spot. Another video showed Derek O’ Brien, a Rajya Sabha member, being loaded into a bus and driven away.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the PM Awas Yojana are two programmes that the state of West Bengal is allegedly owed $15,000 crore by the BJP-led NDA government.
The Trinamool has been accused of staging a “drama” in Delhi to draw attention away from the frauds in West Bengal, but the BJP has disputed this accusation.
