West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee fired back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration on Saturday, accusing his office of feeding the media "false, one-sided, political news" a day after a tense standoff over a meeting to assess the damage caused by Cyclone Yaas.
"Don't insult me like this. We have got a landslide victory, is that why you are behaving like this? You tried everything and lost. Why are you quarreling with us every day?" Ms. Banerjee said at a news conference "to set things straight".
Ms. Banerjee's outburst occurred after the centre ordered her top bureaucrat to return to Delhi, insiders in the federal government informed reporters that she had "skipped" a meeting convened by the Prime Minister, and BJP leaders posted photographs of her vacant seat on social media. Ms. Banerjee saw him for 15 minutes at an airfield where his flight landed, but she did not attend the review meeting, according to the government.
The Chief Minister said that she needed to visit a seaside area and that she needed the PM's authorization before departing.
"I had made plans to visit cyclone-hit areas. I had to travel to Sagar and Digha to see the damage caused by Cyclone Yaas. All my plans were made and ready... then suddenly we get a call that Prime Minister wants to visit Bengal to assess the situation after the cyclone," Ms. Banerjee said.
She further claimed that the Prime Minister convened the conference just to settle political scores and that he invited the opposition, including his own party, the BJP, and her nemesis, governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, in contrast to similar cyclone review sessions he conducted lately in Odisha and Gujarat.
Ms Banerjee disputed the federal government's assertion that she made the Prime Minister and governor wait 30 minutes, claiming that she had to wait 20 minutes for PM Modi on the tarmac.