A day when her Trinamool Congress teamed up with the Congress to attack the Narendra Modi Government in Parliament Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went all guns blazing against the Centre for “breaking the federal norms.”
lambasting the Modi Government for “repeatedly interfering in State affairs” Banerjee told the State Assembly on Tuesday how instead of building consensus on various issues the BJP was “imposing its decisions on the States with the help of brute majority” it had in Parliament.
“The repeated interferences in State affairs only damage the federal structure of the country where both the State and the Centre have their exclusive realms of functioning and neither is superior to the other,” Banerjee said citing how “GST was forced on the States like ours without our consent.”
She said “despite repeated appeals to defer the implementation of GST the Centre coerced us to adopt the new system. We also had no other option but to follow their instructions or else we would lose access to the Treasury.
“Though we were forced to implement GST we did not do it from our heart as the new system,” led to an economic mess, pushed lakhs of people into complete confusion “even as we watched helplessly.”
Attacking the Centre for causing “man made flood” in Bengal Banerjee said Bengal repeatedly asked the Damodar Valley Corporation not to release water from the dams in Jharkhand but its requests were not heeded and an artificial flood was created in the downstream area causing the State a huge loss and about 42 deaths. Bengal had suffered a loss of over Rs 300 crore Irrigation Minister Rajib Banerjee earlier said.
“We even wrote letters to Union Piyush Goyal but nothing was done in this regard,” she said.
Banerjee also told the House that her Government was ready to talk to the striking parties in Darjeeling where an indefinite bandh was going on for past more than a month in support of a separate Gorkhaland State.
Earlier Gorkha Janmukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung had indicated lifting of bandh the day the Centre would call his party for talks on Darjeeling issue.