The Prime Minister appeared mostly for the event, hours after his mother passed away.
New Delhi:
“Your mother is our mother,” West Bengal Minister Mamata Banerjee told Prime Minister Narendra Modi today at an event where he virtually marked the Vande Bharat highway connecting Howrah and New Jalpaiguri.
“Rest in peace, I don’t know how to mourn the death of your mother, your mother is our mother. I miss my mother too,” she told the Prime Minister, who made a virtual appearance in events a few hours after his mother’s death.
Mamata Banerjee also said four of the five railway projects that Prime Minister Modi will launch on Friday have been started during her tenure as railways minister.
Prime Minister Modi’s mother, Heeraben, died in the early hours of Friday. She was 99.
“A century of glory lies at the feet of God… In Maa, I have always felt that trinity, which contains the journey of an ascetic, the symbol of a selfless Karmayogi and a life committed to values,” he posted on Twitter, announcing his mother’s death.
The Prime Minister was scheduled to visit West Bengal to kick off a series of projects, but had to leave Gandhinagar following news of his mother. The Prime Minister’s office tweeted that he will join the programs scheduled for today in Bengal via videoconference.
At the event in Bengal, BJP workers chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’, after which Mamata Banerjee refused to take the stage. Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw tried to convince her to come on stage, but she did not budge.
Senior BJP leaders and union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Subhash Sarkar are said to be trying to convince BJP workers not to chant slogans as it is a government program and not a political one.
Mamata Banerjee addressed the crowd from the side of the stage. She sympathized with the passing of the Prime Minister’s mother and thanked him for participating in the program despite suffering such a great personal loss.
Heeraben Modi died at around 3:30 am today at the United Nations Institute of Cardiology and Mehta Research Center in Ahmedabad, according to a news release from the hospital, ANI news agency reported. She was hospitalized on Wednesday after her health deteriorated.
