Nitish Kumar Chief Minister of Bihar is expected to meet his West Bengal counterpart Miss Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday. He is expected to visit Nabanna, the state government’s administrative headquarters at 2 p.m. to meet the Trinamul Congress chairperson.
While nothing has been made known about the agenda of the meeting neither by the Janata Dal (United) or Trinamul Congress, political observers said it would be a major step to bring the opposition parties together before 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Miss Banerjee has said over and again that the opposition parties should be united to defeat the saffron party in the 2024 Parliament election. In the last couple of months, Miss Banerjee has had an array of meetings with a number of non-BJP and non-Congress leaders on the issue of Opposition unity against the BJP.
Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and HD Kumraswamy, former Chief Minister of Karnataka had earlier met Miss Banerjee at her Kalighat residence. Mr Yadav and Miss Banerjee, in their meeting, agreed to maintain a distance with Congress and rather focus on the unity of the regional forces against BJP in the 2024 polls.
Miss Banerjee also had a meeting with her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik during her trip to the neighbouring state. Some days ago Miss Banerjee had called up MK Stalin, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and urged for a meeting of opposition parties to discuss the role of the Governor. Addressing a Press conference some days ago Miss Banerjee had said the BJP would not cross 200 seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and there would be an understanding among the opposition parties.
The high handedness of the agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation ( CBI) and Enforcement Directorate ( ED) has been criticized by all the opposition parties. The BJP has been accused of letting loose the agencies to harass the leaders of the opposition parties and political observers said this would go up before 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Miss Banerjee has said the opposition parties should be united and who becomes the Prime Minister will be decided later. The opposition leaders have lambasted the BJP for its divisive politics and letting loose one religious community against the other to reap benefit out of it. Before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Miss Banerjee had held a massive rally at the Brigade Parade ground where leaders of all the like minded political parties including Congress had joined.
But the alliance had failed to yield results in the election. In the CPI-M, the leadership is divided over supporting a united Opposition alliance. While some leaders are in favour of forming the alliance after the Lok Sabha election, the other camp said the alliance should be made before the election.
The Central Committee of the party is to meet in Delhi soon to decide the issue.