Mamata asserts no breach of protocol at President's Bengal event

Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, stated on Sunday that there was no protocol violation at President Draupadi Murmu's program in Siliguri and that the Airports Authority of India, which provided the venue, and the event's private organisers were to blame for any mismanagement.

While speaking from the central Kolkata sit-in platform on a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi lashed out at the TMC government "insulting" a woman tribal leader and the President of the country, Banerjee held up an enlarged photograph of the PM remaining seated at an event with veteran BJP leader LK Advani with the President standing next to them.

"The picture shows that the PM is seated when the President is standing. We never do that. It is the BJP which carries the culture of insulting the President, not us," she claimed, while displaying the photograph as "evidence".

"We have full respect for the chair of the President and the Constitution of India, which we consider our mother; do not blame us," Banerjee said, PTI reported.

Maintaining that the state government wasn't even aware of the details of the President's programme and that it wasn't taken into confidence by the private organisers, Banerjee said that the responsibility of the alleged garbage, green room malfunction and lack of women's toilets should be shouldered by the event managers and the AAI on whose plot the function was held.

"We did not pick the venue, you did," she said.