Mamata, MPs may stay out of Modi swearing in

West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee and her 34 newly elected MPs have apparently decided to boycott the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi as the prime minister of India on 26 May in New Delhi. Senior party sources said Banerjee had not received ‘the official invitation’ to attend the function till Thursday evening. However, the party’s spokesperson was unavailable for comment on this issue. 

It was also known that Banerjee has instructed all her party MPs to skip the ceremony and attend the party’s internal meeting on 30 May in Kolkata. The MPs were not aware of any date of their swearing in either till Thursday evening. ‘We have not been intimated about our swearing in date. Perhaps it will happen in early June’, said a senior Trinamool MP.

Though no official comment was unavailable from Trinamool’s side, the discomfort level between Modi and Mamata has perhaps reached an all-time high, with both leaders exchanging heated words against each other during the poll campaign.