A day after he lost the chairmanship of the parliamentary standing committee on Food and Consumer Affairs, senior Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandopadhyay on Thursday slammed the BJP Government for its “dictatorial attitude” saying the saffron party was being run on totalitarian principles.
Apparently referring to the Trinamool Congress Government’s denial to the BJP the chairmanship of Public Accounts Committee in Bengal Assembly the senior TMC MP said the Central Government functioned on the sole motto of “revenge.”
Earlier his party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien said that despite the TMC being the third-largest party in Parliament and the second-biggest Opposition group it was robbed off the chairmanship of a standing committee.
“The third-largest party in Parliament, also the second-biggest Opposition party does not get a single chairmanship…. This is start reality of New India,” he said.
Bengal BJP MP Locket Chatterjee who was given the chairmanship of the standing committee earlier chaired by Bandopadhyay earlier thanked the BJP leadership for “giving me the responsibility and considering me capable of discharging it.” She attacked the TMC saying a “party that has destroyed democracy in Bengal had no right to lecture others on how democracy should run.”
Bandopadhyay on his part said, “I am not only the senior most MP from Bengal but also the one who has at present won most number of times from my State,” adding he had a discussion with Union Minister Prahlad Joshi regarding the issue and was told that the step was a quid pro quo for the TMC’s denial of the PAC chairmanship in Bengal Assembly.
Offering apology for the BJP being denied the PAC in Bengal Bandopadhyay said that “the two cases are not the same as in Bengal the BJP was offered chairmanship of other committees but they refused them but there in Delhi I was removed from the only standing committee where the TMC had chairmanship.”