Dramatic scenes unfolded at the Niti Aayog meeting in New Delhi last weekend. One major Opposition leader, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who attended the meeting, walked out, protesting her mic had been switched off. Other chief ministers like Tamil Nadu’s MK Stalin and Karnataka’s Siddaramaiah boycotted the meeting entirely. Modi-friendly chief ministers, such as Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu, were given ample time to speak. Banerjee, a stalwart stateswoman, three-time CM, four-time Union minister, and seven-time Member of Parliament, was cut off after just five minutes.
Amid the allegations and counter-allegations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim to uphold the spirit of ‘co-operative federalism’ lies thoroughly exposed. Instead, ‘discriminatory federalism,’ based on a decade of excoriating, bruisingly polarised politics, is now the harsh reality.
