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Bhattacharya
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March 5: Singur Trinamul MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya today turned down an invitation from the government to attend the budget session beginning Friday, saying he was referred to in the letter as statistics and programme implementation minister, a designation he had refused to accept.
“I am left with no option but to turn down the invitation from the chief secretary requesting me to attend the budget session as minister for statistics and programme implementation. I refused to accept the less important portfolio after I was shifted from the agriculture department,” Bhattacharya told The Telegraph this afternoon over phone from his Singur home.
He, however, added that he might give a “second thought” to attending the session, provided he was offered an “important department”.
A Trinamul minister close to the chief minister said Mamata had “no plans” of offering Bhattacharya any other portfolio.
“Officially, mastermoshai (Bhattacharya is a retired headmaster) is the statistics and programme implementation minister and Mamata wants him to join it without grumbling,” he said.
Bhattacharya said he was from “rural Bengal” and “not much familiar with statistics”.
“I was overseeing the agriculture department quite efficiently but suddenly, Mamata called me a day before the cabinet shuffle (on November 21) and told me that I would be shifted to statistics and programme implementation. I told her on her face that I won’t accept my new assignment,” Bhattacharya said.
He said Humayun Kabir, who lost the Rejinagar bypoll last week, “should step down as minister on moral grounds”.
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