Mamata may attend Oppn meet on June 12
KOLKATA: Following the request of Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee to Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar to organise an Opposition party meeting to form a strategy to oust the BJP in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the latter has called for such a meeting that is scheduled to take place next month.
Most Opposition parties have already begun formulating plans as to how the BJP can be ousted from the Centre in the upcoming Parliamentary
elections. What further provided an impetus to their mission is the latest Karnataka Assembly elections which turned out to be a debacle for the BJP. Amid this, Mamata has met several Opposition leaders in Kolkata and held hour-long meetings with them.
On 24 April, Nitish Kumar, along with Tejaswi Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal met Mamata Banerjee at the state secretariat, Nabanna. What has now come to light is the announcement that Nitish Kumar has decided to call an Opposition meeting in Bihar next month on June 12.
Sources said that this meeting will be attended by Opposition parties such as Janata Dal-United, Nationalist Congress Party and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), among others. For the past few months, Mamata has met several leaders of Opposition parties with the latest being Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Admi Party.
In between these meetings, she also met the former chief minister of Karnataka, Kumaraswamy, the head of JDS. Although sources in the party could not confirm whether Mamata will go to Bihar to attend the meeting, they said that it is very likely that she would.
Meanwhile, this present development
also comes in the wake of another recent meeting between Nitish Kumar and the Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi to decide upon the dates for the meeting.
Concerning Congress, the TMC had earlier clarified that the party is not too inclined in joining an Opposition coalition headed by Congress. The party had said that it would much rather tie up with other regional parties and that Congress may continue to fight in states they have a stronghold.
However, the equation may have undergone a change with Congress bagging the Karnataka elections. Mamata had recently said that the TMC is willing to extend conditional support to Congress if the latter’s Bengal unit stops opposing the TMC in the state.
Mamata said that TMC can lend support to Congress wherever the latter has a strong grounding but in return, it has to support TMC in Bengal. She said the arrangement needs to be based on a quid pro quo principle. Referring to Congress, she said: “I am supporting you in Karnataka but you are fighting against me in Bengal. This cannot be the policy.”