Kolkata: For the first time since she took over as Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has embarked on a foreign tour. Singapore is the destination, and Ms Banerjee, often criticised for being industry-unfriendly, says she's looking for investors.
But the headline of her visit has been delivered even before she makes her pitch to Singapore - included in her delegation are three men who are in the midst of being tried for charges including culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code and had to take special court permission to travel abroad. While Mamata left last night, the three are expected to join her in Singapore today.
The three are RS Goenka, Manish Goenka and Aditya Agarwal. They were directors on the board of the AMRI hospital in 2011 when a fire at the hospital killed 93 people. The three were arrested, jailed and let out on bail several months later. The three are no longer on the AMRI board now and are representing the Emami group on the visit.
Ms Banerjee is accompanied by a business delegation that includes industrialists and the heads of several chambers of commerce. 'The very composition of the delegation which Mamata Banerjee has taken to Singapore is questionable. What is the role of film stars there?' asked Siddharth Nath Singh of the BJP. He was referring to the inclusion, in Ms Banerjee's tour, of Dev, the wildly-popular Bengali film star who is a law-maker from the Chief Minister's Trinamool Congress.
'Don't you want the development of Bengal?' Ms Banerjee asked reporters at the Kolkata airport.
Opposition parties say Ms Banerjee's track record and her 2008 run-in with Tata Motors, which made the company abandon its plans to manufacturer the low-cost Nano in Bengal, will give reason to investors to think twice about putting money in West Bengal.
Ms Banerjee also did not boost investor confidence when she quit Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition government a few years ago, opposing reform measures.
Her Finance Minister Amit Mitra recently swapped angry words with top industrialist Ratan Tata, who said last week that there's still little evidence of industrial development around Kolkata.
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