Opposition unity: Nitish will meet Mamta in Kolkata, Akhilesh in Lucknow
Patna (IANS) | Taking forward his efforts to unite the country’s opposition parties, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is going to meet his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday. Sources said that Nitish Kumar will go to Kolkata in the afternoon by a special plane and will meet Mamta Banerjee. He will discuss the points on which the opposition parties are uniting against the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
He is expected to stay in Kolkata for three to four hours, including a one-and-a-half or two-hour meeting with his West Bengal counterpart.
However, leaders of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress had earlier scheduled the Nitish-Mamata meeting for April 25.
Trinamool insiders said Nitish Kumar is scheduled to arrive in Kolkata on Tuesday morning and meet Mamata at her Kalighat residence in south Kolkata the same evening.
A member of the West Bengal cabinet said the meeting would focus on unity of opposition forces against the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In the last few months, Mamata Banerjee has held several meetings with several non-BJP and non-Congress leaders on the issue of opposition unity against the BJP in the 2024 elections.
Last month, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav went to Kalighat and met him.
In the meeting, both the leaders agreed to maintain distance with Congress and focus on unity of regional forces against BJP in 2024 elections.
Soon after meeting Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee went to Odisha and held a meeting with her counterpart Naveen Patnaik.
After this, he met Janata Dal-Secular leader H.D. Kumaraswamy met.
Last week, he asked his Tamil Nadu counterpart M.K. The unity of opposition forces against Stalin and the role of governors in opposition-ruled states in the country was discussed.
In recent times, Mamata has emphasized in all her public meetings that if the opposition unites before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it is possible to end the BJP-led rule.
However, she has always avoided the thorny issue of whether the Congress is part of her blueprint for a united opposition against the BJP.
According to JDU, after meeting Mamta, Nitish Kumar will directly go to Lucknow to meet Akhilesh Yadav and discuss the same points.
Nitish Kumar had earlier met Congress presidents Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, leaders of Left parties D. Raja and Sitaram Yechury to discuss opposition unity.
–IANS
