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By Rohit Kumar Singh: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who has taken up the challenging task of forging an Opposition unity, is set to meet his Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and former Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow on Monday.
This is seen as a bid to unite Opposition forces against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre before the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Nitish Kumar will be accompanied by his deputy Tejashwi Yadav and JDU national president Lalan Singh for his Kolkata and Lucknow trips.
Convincing both leaders would be a little difficult for JDU’s de-facto leader, given their past associations with Congress party. While Akhilesh Yadav had stated SP would maintain equidistance from both the Congress and the BJP, senior TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay had also said that the Trinamool Congress will go its own way, maintaining distance from both the Congress and BJP.
NITISH TO MEET MAMATA IN KOLKATA
Nitish Kumar, who will leave Patna around 12 noon, is expected to meet CM Banerjee around 2 pm at her office in state secretariat ‘Nabanna’ today. After his meeting with Mamata Banerjee, the JDU chief will fly to Lucknow to meet Akhilesh Yadav.
Akhilesh Yadav made it clear that the Samajwadi Party would play the lead role in the formation of an opposition alliance in Uttar Pradesh.
When asked about the meeting, Nitish Kumar said, “Why ask such questions now? We will talk when we have done everything.”
Nitish Kumar and Mamata Banerjee are likely to hold a closed-door meeting to strategise on fighting the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, news agency PTI reported. Mamata Banerjee held similar meetings with Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav and Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik last month.
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OPPN UNITY AHEAD OF 2024 POLLS
The meeting comes days after Nitish Kumar’s visit to the national capital to meet Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge and former MP Rahul Gandhi. The meeting was seen as the major step to laying the groundwork for a grand Opposition alliance ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Rahul Gandhi said it was a “historic step” towards Opposition unity and for an “ideological fight”. Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav was also present at the meeting held at Kharge’s residence.
Last week, senior Congress leader Harish Rawat said he held a political discussion with Nitish Kumar in Patna.
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Sharing a photograph of his meeting with Kumar on Twitter, Rawat wrote, “Shri Nitish Kumar, the strong voice of opposition unity in 2024…” However, when asked about the meeting, Rawat said Kumar is an old friend and he had travelled to Patna to appreciate his good works.
The former chief minister of Uttarakhand admitted that there were political discussions between the two leaders. “We are no saints. When political people meet, political talk is bound to happen,” he added.
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(With PTI inputs)
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