'Shed tears for it': Mamata Banerjee takes umbrage for being snubbed at metro launch

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday expressed her deep displeasure for not being invited to the inauguration of the East-West Metro corridor in Kolkata on Thursday. Speaking on the same in the state assembly, the CM asserted that her team had to "shed tears" to sanction the project when she was the railway minister. Banerjee was the railway minister in the erstwhile UPA government from 2009-2011.

"We had worked hard for the East-West Metro project. We had to literally shed tears for it (approval). I felt bad as I was not even informed about the inauguration," Mamata Banerjee said.

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Piyush Goyal flags of metro

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal flagged off the first phase of the East-West corridor of the mass rapid transport network on Thursday. He was accompanied by Union Minister and senior Bengal BJP leader Babul Supriyo. However, upset over the missing of Mamata Banerjee's name, her Trinamool Congress gave the event a miss. The first phase of the metro project connects a 4.88 km stretch between Sector V of Salt Lake – the IT hub of the city with Salt Lake Stadium.

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TMC's boycott

On Wednesday, Senior TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and MLA Sujit Bose, who were invited for the ceremony, decided not to attend the programme. "The East-West Metro corridor project was the brainchild of Mamata Banerjee during her tenure as Railway minister from 2009-2011. It was she who had sanctioned the money in Railway budget. Now, when the project is being inaugurated she has not been invited. This is an insult to the people of Bengal," Dastidar told PTI.

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