Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday expressed her annoyance at the way she was invited by a lower-level bureaucrat for the inauguration ceremony of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s statue at Delhi’s India Gate, and said she was being treated like a “bonded labour”.
Addressing an organisational programme of her party Trinamool Congress here, Banerjee said she received a letter on Tuesday from an officer “probably” of the rank of Under/secretary asking her to be present for the programme where Prime Minister Narendra Modi would inaugurate Netaji’s statue on Thursday evening.
“I received a letter on Tuesday, probably from someone at the undersecretary level, saying PM Narendra Modi will inaugurate the statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at 7 pm and I should be there by 6 pm. Am I a bonded labour? Is this how you address an elected Chief Minister?” Banerjee asked. Banerjee questioned why the union Culture Minister did not write to her. “Why didn’t the Culture Ministry write to me? Undersecretaries are not supposed to write to CM. The Minister of Culture has become so big that he cannot write to CMs. This is why I garlanded the Netaji statue in Red Road at 1 pm in Kolkata,” she said.
