TMC, NCP skip Opposition march on Adani issue
The TMC and NCP on Wednesday skipped a march of 16 Opposition parties, led by the Congress, to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office over allegations of fraud by the Adani Group.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Wednesday skipped a march of 16 Opposition parties, led by the Congress, to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office over allegations of fraud by the Adani Group.
The TMC said the Congress “cannot take us for granted”. HT reached out to NCP for a reaction but did not get one immediately.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) have regularly skipped the Opposition’s coordination meetings led by the Congress. However, on Wednesday, AAP’s Sanjay Singh and BRS’s K Kesava Rao joined the protest march and were also signatories to a letter on the letterhead of Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge to ED director SK Mishra on the allegations against the Adani Group.
A senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be named, said the NCP attended a coordination meeting on Monday but was not a signatory to the letter to the ED director.
TMC leaders said the party leadership is upset over Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s remarks against TMC president and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
“The Congress cannot take us for granted. On one hand, its senior leader is alleging that there is a Mamata-(Narendra) Modi-Adani link, on the other, it is expecting us to stand with them. The person who made the remarks is not a nobody, he is the sitting leader of the party in the House,” a senior TMC leader said, in an apparent reference to Chowdhury’s remarks against Banerjee after the Congress won the recent byelection in Sagardighi in West Bengal.
On February 6, Chowdhury had questioned Banerjee’s “silence” over the Hindenburg report on Adani Group, stating that she might have “received instructions to keep mum over the matter”. “There can be only one reason (for Banerjee’s silence) – her closeness with Modi and new friendship with Adani. The Tajpur Port will be built by the Adani Group, and a MoU has been signed to that effect. Didi has promised all forms of help to the Adanis,” he had said.
A second leader said the TMC is aware of the strain that the difference of opposition with the Congress are putting on the Opposition unity and the negative optics it has created. “We are in touch with other non-Congress political parties. We have kept other like-minded parties in the loop,” the leader said.
