Mamata Banerjee leaves for 8-day tour to Italy, Germany today

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will leave for an eight-day tour in Italy and Germany on Friday morning. This will be her first foreign trip after coming to power for the second time.

Banerjee will stay in Italy from September 2 to 5. She will attend the canonisation ceremony of Mother Teresa at Vatican City. Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi will host a special reception for her either on September 4 or 5. Raggi is the first woman Mayor of Rome.

From Italy, she will fly to Munich where she would meet some German industrialists who are into manufacturing business. This is of great importance before the Bengal Global Business Summit scheduled to be held on January 20, 2017.

Banerjee will be accompanied by a 12-member of official delegation and 29 industrialists and three security personnel. ADG (security) Virendra left for Italy on Thursday morning.

The industrialists who will accompany the Chief Minister include C S Ghosh, chairman cum MD of Bandhan Bank, Utsav Parekh, TV Narayanan, Srikant Mohta, Subhas Chandra,Siddharth Birla, SK Podder, Mayank Jalan and Partha Ghosh.

She will be accompanied by party colleagues, Sudip Bandopadhyay and Derek O’ Brien. The state Home secretary Malay Dey and CM’s secretary Gautam Sanyal will be accompanying her. A team of journalists in the rank of editors from English and vernacular dailies are also accompanying her.

Before leaving for Europe, Banerjee gave necessary instructions to her Cabinet colleagues. One senior minister will stay in Nabanna every day. Another will be present in Singur where the land survey work will begin on Friday.