NITI Aayog clarifies after Mamata Banerjee's BIG claims: ‘We actually adjusted…'

The NITI Aayog CEO issued a statement on Saturday after Mamata Banerjee walked out of a meeting led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The West Bengal Chief Minister had claimed that she was unfairly stopped midway through her speech. The Trinamool Congress leader had been the sole politician from the Opposition INDIA bloc to attend the meet.

According to the statement shared by CEO BVR Subrahmanyam, Banerjee was allocated an early timeslot following a request — bypassing the trend of each state going alphabetically. The top official said that the Chief Minister had left early because “she had to catch a flight to Calcutta”.

“We actually adjusted and the Defence Minister actually called her in just before Gujarat. So she made her statement. Every chief minister is allotted seven minutes and there's just a clock on top of the screen which tells you the time that is remaining. So it goes from seven to six to five to four to three. At the end of that, it shows zero. Zero. Nothing else. Nothing else has happened other than that...Then she said look, I would have liked to speak for more time, but I'll not speak anymore. That was it. There was nothing more. We all heard,” the NITI Aayog CEO told the media.

Meanwhile the Press Information Bureau issued a fact-check rejecting Banerjee's claims as ‘misleading’. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman added that it was "unfortunate" that Banerjee claimed her mic had been switched off.

“The clock only showed that her speaking time was over. Even the bell was not rung to mark it,” PIB Factcheck said in an X post.

“CM Mamata Banerjee attended the Niti Aayog meeting. We all heard her. Every CM was given the allotted time, and that was displayed on the screen, which was present before every table. We could see that two tables have a screen before us. She said in the media that her mic was turned off. That is completely false. Every CM was given their due time to speak,” Sitharaman added in conversation with ANI.

(With inputs from agencies)