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West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee meets JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy in Kolkata
This is Mamata Banerjee’s third meeting within a week’s time with a key leader of a non-Congress opposition party
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee met Janata Dal (S) leader and former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy at her resident in south Kolkata on Friday.
“Former CM of Karnataka and @JanataDal_S leader Shri @hd_kumaraswamy called upon Hon’ble CM Smt @MamataOfficial today, in Kalighat, Kolkata,” the Trinamool Congress (TMC) tweeted.
Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in the southern state later this year.
This is the third meeting within a week’s time between the Trinamool Congress supremo with a key leader of a non-Congress opposition party and is being seen as the opposition’s efforts to find a common platform ahead of the 2024 general elections to fight the BJP
On Thursday, Banerjee met Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of Odisha, in Bhubaneswar on the concluding day of her three-day visit to the eastern state. Earlier this month, she met Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav in Kolkata.
Even though the meeting between Banerjee and Patnaik was said to be a courtesy call in which the two leaders “resolved to make the federal structure of the country permanent and strong”, both Banerjee and Yadav agreed to maintain ‘equal distance’ from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress.
Even though there was no official statement on the outcome of the meeting, according to a TMC leader, Banerjee and Kumaraswamy discussed the present political situation in the country and the way forward to fight and defeat the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
“Mamata Banerjee has meet Akhilesh Yadav, Naveen Patnaik and H D Kumaraswamy. She will hold dialogues with parties that are capable of defeating the BJP in their own states,” said a TMC leader.
The TMC supremo announced that her party will go into the 2024 polls alone after her party lost in the Sagardighi by-election to the Left-backed Congress-candidate. She alleged that there was an “immoral alliance” between the BJP, Congress and the CPI(M).
