Jaitley won’t attend Mamata govt event, would have sent out wrong signal: BJP

AFTER INITIALLY accepting the West Bengal government’s invite for the upcoming Bengal Global Summit, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has decided not to attend the event.

“The current circumstances don’t allow for such a thing. He isn’t coming. We communicated to the party that this would be a wrong move and it would send outawrongsignal,”formerbengal BJP president Rahul Sinha said.

Jaitley, who was initially in favour of “keeping Centre-state relations independent of politics”, has “relented in the face of the evolving political situation”, sources said. This was after BJP’S state unit vice-president Jayprakash Majumdar was arrested for criminal conspiracy, fraud and cheating, charges which the party says are false.

Incidentally, the stalemate between the Centre and states, particularly West Bengal, over the Goods and Service Taxes (GST) continues. “There was no sense in deciding to come for the summit. At a time when the state BJP and Mamata Banerjee are at war on the streets of Bengal and she is arresting our leaders, one of our most senior central leaders sharing the stage with the chief minister would send a very wrong message to our party and Bengal,” said a BJP leader.

Lastweek,jaitleyhadsurprised boththewestbengalgovernment as well as the state unit of his own party by agreeing to attend the third-edition of the summit, scheduled to begin on January 20 in Kolkata, said sources.

Mamata had sent an invite to the Finance Minister weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation move. She had even “reached out to Arun Jaitley on his birthday in December” and had stressed that their “personal relationship hadn’t suffered”.

Jaitley attended both the previous editions of the summit. A number of BJP leaders had criticised Jaitley for sharing the stage with Mamata.

Arun Jaitley had initially accepted the invite.