Party will nominate MPs: Mamata

TMC chief Mamata Banerjee on Monday said it was the right of a political party, not the government, to nominate MPs for the Operation Sindoor outreach.

She said the TMC was not boycotting the Centre’s multi-party diplomatic mission to counter Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and would send its representatives once a formal request is received from the Centre.

The government had named Yusuf Pathan from the TMC in one of the seven delegations.

Mamata said the Centre should not decide which party will send whom as part of the delegation. “We were not contacted about this. Nowadays, they only inform the parliamentary party, not the main outfit, but the parliamentary party cannot take such policy decisions,” the West Bengal CM said at the Kolkata airport before leaving for north Bengal on a three-day official trip.

Meanwhile, the BJP accused the TMC of playing politics and said that it had forced Yusuf Pathan to drop out of the delegation.

BJP co-in-charge for West Bengal Amit Malviya said: “West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s decision to force the TMC MP to withdraw from the multi-party delegation is unfortunate. This delegation should have been kept above partisan politics.”