Yes she will. No she won’t. The battle of wits between the Centre and West Bengal — or between Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee, if you please — is getting testier.
Miffed at the BJP gains in her home state, Mamata has backed out of attending Prime Minister Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. The BJP claims that 54 people have been killed in political violence in Bengal has upset her, leading to this change of decision.
It is time Mamata understood that the grounds under her feet have sunk and that’s mainly due to the tantrums she keeps throwing. She was eccentric in her ways during her Congress avatar, threw weight around while in the Vajpayee cabinet, and bossed over her party colleagues who were listless about what to do with her.
In Modi-Shah duo, she has met her perfect opposition who won’t buckle down and will stand up to her. It is entirely the BJP’s prerogative whom they want to invite for the PM’s oath-taking ceremony. The party wants to show its gratitude to the workers who lost their lives while spreading its ideology and there’s nothing wrong in it.
Had Mamata somehow managed to wrest the PM’s post (a scenario that her well-wishers were projecting), she would have done the same and more. Mamata can’t play it both ways – she can’t describe the ceremony and the invitation a constitutional one and then insist she is not attending it because it has been politicised by the BJP.
If she was gracious enough, she could have made the point by attending it, like several other opposition parties are doing, and then continue to oppose the PM on political ground. It is about time Mamata realised that the joke is on her.
