Mamata to attend Modi's swearing-in as PM

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said she will attend the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi as prime minister on May 30 in New Delhi.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo told reporters at the state secretariat that the invitation for the ceremony arrived on Tuesday and she would be attending it as "constitutional courtesy".

"I have spoken to a couple of other chief ministers and have decided to attend it.

"There are certain ceremonial programmes under the Constitution. We try to attend such events when we get an invitation for the swearing-in programmes of the president and the prime minister," she said.

Banerjee's decision to attend the ceremony in New Delhi on Thursday, in which Modi will be sworn-in as the prime minister for the second consecutive term, comes after a heated verbal duel between the two leaders during the just-concluded Lok Sabha election.

Modi, who spearheaded the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) poll campaign in West Bengal, addressed ...