On Thursday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi when she visits Delhi next week in the first one-on-one encounter after the bitterly-fought state elections that she won in May.
“I will go to Delhi for 2-3 days. I will meet the President if I get time. PM has given me time. I will meet him,” she said, as she attacked the central government over a range of issues from the Pegasus snooping scandal to the tax raids on media houses at a news conference.
Seen by many as the makings of an effort to assume a wider role in national politics and unite the country’s disparate opposition against the BJP, Mamata Banerjee’s trip to Delhi has generated a fair amount of buzz her recent success against the ruling party.
Ms Banerjee said the Pegasus snooping scandal was “bigger” than the 1972’s Watergate scandal in the US and coupled with the latest tax raids on media houses, signalled a “super-emergency” in the country.
“I condemn the attack on the owners and journalists of Dainik Bhaskar. On one side, the raids, on the other Pegasus. This is dangerous,” she said.
“Pegasus is bigger than Watergate. A bigger emergency than an emergency. Super-emergency. How long can this go on?” she said, holding up a taped phone during a public appearance for the second day in a row.
“All agencies have been turned into Pegasus. The government doesn’t believe in its own ministers.
Journalists are also being tapped. My phone is getting tapped through the day. Civil society, women, they should all protest. Everything is getting recorded. Video and audio,” Ms Banerjee said.
Speaking about the tax raids on Dainik Bhaskar newspaper group and a TV channel in Uttar Pradesh she said, “They have now gone to Dainik Bhaskar because they had reported boldly about bodies floating in the river in UP. They also reported on Pegasus. Media is being silenced.”