West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik have met twice in recent times, once in 2017 and then in 2020, but have never discussed politics as stated on record.
The buzz around her meeting with Patnaik, which is scheduled for March 23, she will reach Bhubaneswar today evening and proceed to Puri, where she will spend the night at Nirman Nivas. Banerjee will visit the Jagannath Temple her on Wednesday to offer her prayers to the Holy Trinity. Special arrangements will be made for Mamata’s darshan on Wednesday as the Banaklagi ritual will be performed in the temple on the same day.
According to sources, this will be built as a private visit and there will be no political discussion during this visit.
Senior TMC MP Sudip Banerjee said, “A lot of NDA partners are unhappy; so, we will talk to them. All regional parties will work together, that’s what Mamata Banerjee wants.”
On March 23, Mamata Banerjee will meet with Naveen Patnaik before taking the return flight to Kolkata from Bhubaneswar.
Though it has specified that it will be an unofficial visit, the upcoming one-to-one meeting between Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik has sparked speculation of the West Bengal chief minister’s initiative to forge an alliance of regional parties for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls without keeping Congress in the fray.
