{"id":312694,"date":"2019-05-29T10:29:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-29T10:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=312694"},"modified":"2019-05-29T10:29:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T10:29:34","slug":"mamata-banerjee-to-skip-narendra-modis-swearing-in-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/mamata-banerjee-to-skip-narendra-modis-swearing-in-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamata Banerjee to skip Narendra Modi&#8217;s swearing-in ceremony"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-305724 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Mamata-banerjee-300x185.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"521\" height=\"321\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/Mamata-banerjee-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/Mamata-banerjee-356x220.jpg 356w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/Mamata-banerjee.jpg 650w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 521px) 100vw, 521px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has decided not to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s swearing-in ceremony on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Referring to the BJP\u2019s allegation that 54 of its workers had been killed in political violence in Bengal Mamata called it &#8220;completely untrue&#8221; in a letter she posted on her Twitter account.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cThe oath-taking ceremony is an august occasion to celebrate democracy, not one that should be devalued by any political party,&#8221; Mamata tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In a letter addressed to Narendra Modi Mamata said, &#8220;Congratulations, new Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji. It was my plan to accept the &#8216;constitutional invitation&#8217; and attend the oath-taking ceremony. However, in the last one hour, I am seeing media reports that the BJP are claiming 54 people have been murdered in political violence in Bengal. This is completely untrue. There have been no political murders in Bengal,&#8221; said the Chief Minister, adding that the deaths may have taken place due to personal enmity, family quarrels and other disputes, &#8220;nothing related to politics&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;So, I am sorry, Narendra Modi Ji, this has compelled me not to attend the ceremony,&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;The ceremony is an august occasion to celebrate democracy, not one that should be devalued by any political party that uses it as an opportunity to score political points,&#8221; Mamata Banerjee wrote in a letter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On Tuesday, Mamata had surprised many by saying she would attend the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi as prime minister on May 30.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">She said she had spoken to other Chief Ministers and believed \u201cthere are certain constitutional obligations that we try to fulfil.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has decided not to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s swearing-in ceremony on Thursday. Referring to the BJP\u2019s allegation that 54 of its workers had been killed in political violence in Bengal Mamata called it &#8220;completely untrue&#8221; in a letter she posted on her Twitter account. \u201cThe oath-taking ceremony is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":305724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2089,1801,2014,2917],"tags":[1889,316],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312696,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312694\/revisions\/312696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/305724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}