The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has decided not to send its Lok Sabha MP Yusuf Pathan as a member of the multi-party delegation that the Union Government is sending to different countries to hammer home its logic on Operation Sindoor post Pahalgam terror attack and neutralise the disinformation campaign mounted by Pakistan in its aftermath.
This, because the party thinks that the Centre has no right to unilaterally select members of other parties in such matters.
As the State BJP leaders immediately slammed the TMC for boycotting the all-party delegation Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who is also the TMC chief quickly intervened telling the media men on Monday that it was not a question of boycotting the delegation but a question of “parliamentary and federal ethics.â€
“It is wrong to say that we are boycotting the delegation as the TMC has from the beginning made it very clear that we are with the Central Government on whatever decision it takes on external affairs. We are not boycotting, why we have decided to withdraw him (Pathan) is because it is a matter of parliamentary ethics. You have every right to send a parliamentary delegation comprising representatives from other parties but you have no right to select those representatives, you will have to ask the other parties to nominate their members to such delegation, that is a matter or courtesy and political propriety,†the Chief Minister said before leaving for his business trip to North Bengal.
Pathan a cricketer-turned-politician is a first time MP from Behrampore in Murshidabad district from where he defeated veteran Congress warhorse Adhir Chowdhury in 2024 general elections.
According to inside sources the Chief Minister was more interested in sending someone like its Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien or Krishnagar MP Mahua Moitra.
TMC general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee too backed the Chief Minister’s decision saying that his party would never accept “unilateral decisions†in a federal democracy.
“It is a good decision to send a delegation to the world to tell other countries what mischief Pakistan has been playing against us for decades. It is the need of the hour to take along with you the world opinion. There is also no problem in selecting your own leaders to be a part of such delegation, if BJP is selecting its own leaders, that is its own decision, but the Union Government cannot take unilateral decisions on selecting members from other parties, that is against federal democratic ethics. Centre should show good intent and call for a wider deliberations from all parties in the Opposition,†Banerjee who is also the nephew of the Chief Minister said insisting that the decision of his party chief should not be taken as one of a boycott.
“It should not be seen as if we have opted out of the delegation or we are boycotting it. Rather we want to make clear the technical aspects, it is for the TMC as an independent political outfit to decide who will go from our party, not the Union Government,†he said.
The BJP was prompt to react with State party president and Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar saying that the TMC should not have taken it as a political decision. “It is not a political decision but a national duty, they should have considered it, when the Congress Government had sent Atal Behari Vajpayee to lead one such delegation the BJP had not come in the way because we knew that it was a national duty that our leader was going to do, in such matters political identities should be secondary and national identity should be primary,†Majumdar said adding the TMC should stop sensing politics in everything.
