West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “unscheduled” stop to buy ‘jalmuri’ – the beloved snack of Bengalis and others in the eastern parts of the subcontinent – during the election campaign in Jhargram.
“How were the cameras there when ‘Unscheduled’ stopped? The entire episode was scripted,” she said at a campaign rally in Morarai constituency on April 20.
The Prime Minister’s video on his Instagram account alone has reached 100 million (or Rs 10 crore) views since Sunday evening, several BJP supporters pointed out online on Monday. A similar number was reported on Facebook.
Others noticed the camera angle from inside the store and claimed it looked like a setup.
“SPG arranged the whole thing.”
Prime Minister Modi paid cash for a meal of street food made with puffed rice, green chillies and a dozen or more spices or smaller ingredients. Trinamool Congress chief Banerjee also mocked his method of payment. “He was seen carrying $10 paper in his pocket. Is it believable? It’s all drama.”
The video showed that when the Prime Minister, accompanied by his security personnel, paid the store owner the price of the snack, the man denied the amount. But Modi insisted on accepting this.
Mamata Banerjee questioned the spontaneity of the entire episode: “Cameras were placed there beforehand. SPG [Special protection Group, responsible for providing proximity security to the PM] “I arranged the whole thing.”
Describe the helicopter Soren
The incident sparked another controversy when the ruling TMC accused the Prime Minister of “anti-tribal mentality”, as it was alleged that due to his stopover in Jalmuri, Jharkhand CM and tribal leader Hemant Soren’s helicopter could not land in Jhargram. Soren and his wife Kalpana were forced to wait for hours and eventually had to cancel their program and return to Ranchi, TMC posted on social media platform X.
The West Bengal state elections are being held in two phases, on April 23 and 29, amid a row over the deletion of thousands of votes that the TMC has blamed on alleged collusion between the BJP and the Election Commission.
The counting of votes is scheduled to take place on May 4, in addition to the counting of votes in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
Banerjee has been prime minister since 2011 after breaching the decades-old Leftist citadel. The BJP rose to 77 seats in the 294-seat assembly in 2021, up from just three in 2016, but the TMC also increased its seat count. The TMC’s main tone against the BJP is that it is a group of outsiders, while the Hindutva ideology-driven BJP alleges corruption and nepotism towards Muslims by the TMC.
