West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi raising objections to inter-ministerial central teams operating on their own in the State.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had set up two teams to assess the ground situation in hotspots of West Bengal, make suggestions to the State and also file a report to the Centre. The order names seven districts - that include Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, Medinipur East, Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri - as hotspots.

Banerjee pointed out that the Union Home Minister called her up at 1 PM to talk about the issue; while the teams had arrived by 10.10 am. Moreover, the teams had landed within 30 minutes of the State receiving the MHA order.

The Chief Minister took exception to the fact that teams took the help of BSF and SSBs for logistic support; and moved on ground “without consulting the State government”.

Identification of hotspots

Banerjee objected to the identification of hotspot districts and called such a classification “devoid of any facts” and without “any credibility to lend”.

She reasoned that a district like Kalimpong reported its last case of infection in April 2; while for Jalpaiguri the last case was on April 4. In Darjeeling, the last case was on April 16.

“It shows that selection of districts and observations made unilaterally are nothing but figment of imagination and unfortunate,” she wrote adding that “such unilateral action on the part of the Central government was not desirable”.

Incidentally, she had put out a series of tweets making clear her displeasure over the happenings.

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