Comments
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday slammed Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar for writing a letter to her on the alleged “army coup” stating that he has made “wild assertion” and made “near defamatory remarks” on a chief minister.
“I take strong exception to your wild assertion that my articulation of rights of State Government has impacted the morale of armed forces. Don’t think that it behoves a Union Government Minister to pass near-defamatory remarks on a CM of any State,” Banerjee said in a letter.
She even alleged that the army was being used by the Centre for political mileage.
“They don’t know how to write to a chief minister. They are using the Army to achieve their political purpose,” she added.
The Chief Minister was reacting to a letter written to her by Parrikar, who wanted to put the records straight on the incident that took place on December 1.
After more than a week of the incident, the Defence Minister told her in the letter that he was “deeply pained” by her allegations toward the Army, which is one of the disciplined institutions of the country.
“Your allegations in this regard run the risk of adversely impacting the morale of the country’s armed forces and the same were not expected from a person of your standing and experience in public life,” he said.
Parrikar said contrary to Banerjee’s claims the state agencies were consulted before Army was asked to carry out joint inspection of sites.
The exercise was carried out on December 1 and 2 by the Indian Army’s Easter Command in West Bengal and other states under their jurisdiction to collect information on movement of heavy vehicles at toll gates.
“Political parties and the politicians may have the luxury of making wild and unsubstantiated allegations against each other but one needs to be extremely careful while referring to our armed forces,” he said.
On December 1, Banerjee had stayed at the state secretariat for the whole night even as her party urged removal of the army with immediate effect from the toll plazas and other places. She said her government was not consulted before conducting the exercise.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.