By D N Singh
Barely months to go for the 2024, the saber rattling in the opposition has started once again. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee coming to meet her counterpart in Odisha Naveen Patnaik was not for nothing.
Is it an exercise at renewing the buzz about creating a third front seriously or it is one of a few such mussel flexing as before and at last each opposition party getting drifted away from each other giving a walk-over to the BJP against a fractured opposition
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met with her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik today, renewing the buzz of the Trinamool chief leading an initiative to forge an alliance of regional parties against the BJP.
Mamata Banerjee called the meeting a “courtesy call” and the Odisha Chief Minister said there was no “political discussion” during the meeting, “We resolved to make the federal structure of the country permanent and strong. There was no other political discussion,” he said.
Both the leaders seemed hiding behind excuses and avoid media question show that, it is all in a preliminary stage as Mamata is scheduled to visit some other states apparently in search of consensus in the matter of forging an alliance.
There is more to what both the leaders would have us believe. Political observers feel that there is an attempt at getting Naveen Patnaik on board signaling at a unity to shed off the baggage of any ‘front’ etc. Which has earlier failed to make any headway in the past.
Keeping both the Congress and the BJP at a equidistance what had transpired earlier from a meeting between Mamata and Akhilash Yadav sometime back in Kolkata.
But to many that appears tougher given the mood of the mood of the Congress which never wants to give up its attitude to remain a big brother.
Mamata’s schedule to meet the JD(S) shortly may be step towards that common goal but her plan to meet the AAP convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also looks very unrealistic when AAP aims at a national presence on its own.
While maintaining that regional parties are better prepared to take on the BJP in 2024, Mamata Banerjee earlier said she was meeting Naveen
‘Governance platform’ as being described by Mamata while meeting several CMs appear to an sudden metaphor to hide the Third front or whatever in the past had lost its sheen against BJP.
