The "Jai Shri Ram" slogans by BJP supporters, at the arrival of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the inauguration ceremony of West Bengal's first Vande Bharat Express on Friday, were not that serious a matter for her to get angry, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
After the inauguration of the Joka-Taratala metro rail route on Friday evening, the Railways Minister, talking to media persons, said that the slogans were raised out of emotion by some people.
"We invited the Chief Minister. We are happy that she turned up. Nothing of that sort happened that could make her angry. Some people raised slogans at Howrah out of their emotion. There is nothing to get angry about," he said.
Banerjee got irritated after some BJP supporters raised "Jai Shri Ram" slogans, and in protest, she refused to come on the dais and instead, attended the entire programme sitting on a chair adjacent to it.
However, her action has received tacit support from BJP Lok Sabha member from Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency, S.S, Ahluwalia. "This was a government programme. It would have been better had the 'Bharat Mata Ki jai' slogan been raised there," he said.
Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari has claimed that the Chief Minister actually used those slogans as an excuse to avoid sharing the same dais with him. "It is an outcome of her frustration as she is not able to consume the bitter truth of her defeat to me at Nandigram in the 2021 Assembly elections," Adhikari said.
Reacting to salvos from the BJP leaders, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member, Santanu Sen said that the phrase "political courtesy is missing from the dictionaries of BJP leaders. "They have taught on how to use the dais of the government programme for narrow political purposes," he said.