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April 20, 2020

Unilateral action breach of established protocol: Mamata Banerjee on the sending of IMCTs without proper intimation

Unilateral action breach of established protocol: Mamata Banerjee on the sending of IMCTs without proper intimation

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today (April 20) wrote a letter to the Prime Minister on the issue of sending inter-ministerial Central teams (IMCT) to Bangla to study the State’s handling of the situation that has arisen out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though appreciating the “proactiveness of the Central Government in sending their teams” to the State, she pointed out to the fact that “the same was done without prior intimation” and therefore is “a breach of established protocol”.

She wrote that while the Union home minister had called her up to intimate her of the Centre’s plan on sending IMCTs to Bangla at 1 pm, the teams, for which the State Government is supposed to arrange the “logistics”, had already landed at Kolkata Airport at 10.10 am and had “approached Central forces like BSF, SSB  for the logistics support” and proceeded “without any consultation with the State Government”.

Not just that, even “the order dated April 19, 2020 from Home Ministry to Chief Secretary also reached 30 minutes before the teams arrived”.

The “established procedure”, the chief minister wrote, is for Central teams to take be briefed by State officials “prior to going for the field visits”.

Delving further on the grave issue, she wrote that while the Home Ministry’s letter to the Chief Secretary refers to a “number of violations of lockdown measures” which have led to a “serious” situation in “some of the districts”, the “observations are devoid of facts”.

As examples, she wrote that while Kalimpong district reported the last incident of infection on April 2, Jalpaiguri reported its last infection on April 4 and Darjeeling on April 16.

These show that the “selection of districts and observations made unilaterally are nothing but a figment of imagination” and are therefore “unfortunate”.

She ended the latter by observing that the Bangla Government is working in “close liaison with concerned Central ministries”, and pointing out to the fact that both lockdown and its extension were “proactively” announced by the former before the Central Government did, and therefore it is in the best interests of both for the Centre to refrain from “unilateral action” and for both to work together “relentless round the clock” to “contain the COVID-19 crisis”.

Following the sending of this letter, she tweeted on the same issue, saying that while “we welcome all constructive support and suggestions” for “negating the COVID-19 crisis”, the “basis” for the Centre to “deploy IMCTs in select districts” under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 is “unclear”.

Therefore she urged both the home minister and the Prime Minister to “share the criterion” used for deploying the IMCTs, without knowing which the State “would not be able to move ahead on this” as then this “might … be” a breach of “the spirit of federalism”.