It is perhaps sheer coincidence that the meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs was convened the day after Mamata Banerjee ranted against the Centre’s “diplomatic failure” for the deteriorating relations with “our neighbours” ~ China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.

Despite the rapid-fire survey, she was not far off the mark, if recent developments are any indication. However, the West Bengal Chief Minister had no empirical evidence to confirm that 400 “schools teaching the Chinese language have come up at Pashupati gate near Darjeeling”, central entities such as RAW, IB, SSB, and NIA being the target of her ire.

Markedly, the Darjeeling administration doesn't figure in the canvas. On the face of it, the charge is serious enough, but the question survives: Is the figure a rough-and-ready estimate? One such school has been functioning in Kolkata’s Chowringhee Square area for ages.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar used his diplomatic finesse to skirt the issue, but blunted the Chief Minister’s second allegation when he downplayed suggestions of Chinese interference in the Gorkhaland agitation. Overall, Miss Banerjee’s assessment of South Asia was fairly correct, though Bhutan remains India’s only friend within the SAARC bloc… even after the hiccups over LPG supplies two years back.

There is little doubt that Delhi has had to trim its sails to the winds of change with the emergence of a constitutional monarchy in Thimpu. There has been a souring of equations with Nepal over the rights of Madhesis, an ethnic group on the Indo-Nepal border.

Ties with Bangladesh have been on a rollercoaster not least because the Chief Minister is loath to share the waters of the Teesta. She was remarkably prompt in conveying the burning of Begum Hasina’s effigy, allegedly by the VHP, in Kolkata to the Centre.

The communal connotation is unmistakable, but was it too hot a potato for Kolkata Police to handle? To deflect the charge that as Chief Minister she has commented on foreign policy, she has taken care to underline the geographical proximity; three of the four countries mentioned are Bengal’s neighbours as well.

The Chief Minister was on firmer ground in relation to the recent rampage by goons ~ belonging to both communities ~ in Basirhat-Baduria. While the influx from Bangladesh has assumed a steady flow since 1979, the latest development must cause considerable alarm ~ the entry of Jamaat activists, who are stoutly opposed to Hasina, to North 24-Parganas via the HasnabadTaki frontier.

She has hit the bull’s eye when she poses the query ~ “What were the IB and SSB doing?”

She has somehow overlooked the role of the BSF, whose camps and watch-towers dot the Ichamati riverside that demarcates India from Bangladesh.

Hence her cavil that the Basirhat trouble-makers had entered through Satkhira ~ across the border. But more important, she has also not spoken of the state IB which reports to her and cannot evade responsibility.