Mamata rediscovers Nehru, says he wrote Freedom at Midnight

Kolkata, Nov 15: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee embarrassed her party in the assembly on Friday when she said she had read Jawaharlal Nehru's book Freedom At Midnight and learnt a lot about the country. Banerjee said this while paying tributes to India's first prime anniversary on his 125th birth anniversary, a report published in ABP Ananda said. [Oneindia Exclusive: What an explosive report on Saradha scam reveals]

The entire assembly was thrown into silence at once. While Education Minister Partha Chatterjee tried his best to suppress the shock, Congress leader Manas Bhuyan kept looking at the ceiling and Leader of Opposition Surjyakanta Mishra kept his head low, the report said.

Later, it was Mishra who took up the job of correcting the chief minister during his speech. He said the book written by Nehru is called the Discovery of India while the compilation of his letters to young Indira, his daughter, named Letters from a Father to His Daughter, is also famous. On "freedom at midnight", Mishra said it formed Nehru's address to the nation when India achieved freedom on August 15, 1947.

Freedom at Midnight is another book written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, which was published in 1975.

The Opposition mocked the chief minister's goof-up. One even said CM Banerjee could discover another book written by Nehru while attending the event organised by the Congress on the occasion of his birth anniversary.

CM Banerjee called a doctorate MLA as a doctor while speaking on Kunal Ghosh

Mamata Banerjee gave more opportunities to her opposition to laugh during the day. She called one MLA named Tarun Naskar as a doctor while actually he is a doctorate. She termed another Congress MLA as a doctor at which she said she is a lawyer. When the media asked her about the terror network unearthed in Bengal, she said even the deaths of cockroach and lizard make big news nowadays, the report said.

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