No breach of protocol by state government at President's north Bengal event, asserts Mamata

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday asserted there was no breach of protocol at President Droupadi Murmu's programme in Siliguri and said that the responsibility of mismanagement at the function, if any, lay with its private organisers and the Airports Authority of India who provided the venue of the event.

While speaking from the central Kolkata sit-in platform on a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi lashed out at the TMC government "insulting" a woman tribal leader and the President of the country, Banerjee held up an enlarged photograph of the PM remaining seated at an event with veteran BJP leader LK Advani with the President standing next to them.

"The picture shows that the PM is seated when the President is standing. We never do that. It is the BJP which carries the culture of insulting the President, not us," she claimed, while displaying the photograph as "evidence".

"We have full respect for the chair of the President and the Constitution of India, which we consider our mother; do not blame us," Banerjee said.

President Droupadi Murmu had expressed her anguish at not finding either the chief minister or any of her cabinet ministers to receive her at the Bagdogra Airport on Saturday, where she reached to attend an international tribal conference.

Murmu had also expressed her displeasure over the change of venue of her programme near Siliguri.

Maintaining that the state government wasn't even aware of the details of the President's programme and that it wasn't taken into confidence by the private organisers, Banerjee said that the responsibility of the alleged garbage, green room malfunction and lack of women's toilets should be shouldered by the event managers and the AAI on whose plot the function was held.

"We did not pick the venue, you did," she said.

Banerjee said that Goutam Deb, the mayor of Siliguri, honoured protocol and was present to receive her in Bagdogra.

"I am sitting in a dharna to protect people's rights. How can I leave?" she said.

"You are targeting Bengal on the eve of assembly elections by saying whatever pleases you. Why? Why? Why?" Banerjee added, without specifying exactly who she referred to.