Amid row over West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's walkout from the NITI Aayog meeting, the governing council's CEO, BVR Subrahmanyam, clarified that her request to speak early before lunch had been accepted.
NITI Aayog's statement came hours after Mamata claimed that her mic was muted five minutes after she started speaking, while saying that other CMs were given more time to speak.
Additionally, Subrahmanyam also noted that Chief Ministers of as many as 10 states and Union Territories did not attend the governing council meeting.
"If states do not participate in governing council meeting, it is their loss," he said while addressing a press conference.
The NITI Aayog CEO further said that 26 CMs and Lieutenant Governors of UTs attended the meeting.
Subrahmanyam also informed of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intent on wanting districts to become the drivers of growth. He said that the PM has called for setting up target of zero poverty starting from villages.
Notably, Mamata had said that one of her aims to protest against the NITI Aayog meeting today was that she finds the Union Budget to be "biased".
West Bengal Industry Minister and TMC leader Shashi Panja alleged that "cooperative federalism" was undermined since the chief minister was not allowed to complete her speech.
Notably, PIB Fact-check took to X that it was "misleading" to claim that Mamata's microphone was switched off, saying that the clock only showed that her speaking time was over.
Mamata's walkout from the governing council meeting however sparked a war of words between her Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP termed her action to be "drama", while TMC accused the central government of suppressing the voices of the opposition and undermining the cooperative federalism.
West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury also dismissed it as a "scripted" move to attract media attention, given the concerns over Rahul Gandhi's rising prominence as the Opposition leader.
In terms of skipping the meeting as a way of condemning the Union Budget, several INDIA bloc CMs had announced said that they wouldn't attend in protest as the Budget was "anti-federal" in spirit and "extremely discriminatory" towards their states.
The list of Chief Ministers include Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin, Kerala's Pinarayi Vijayan, Punjab's Bhagwant Mann and all three Congress CMs, i.e., Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal's Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Telangana's Revanth Reddy.
