West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee met former Congress President Sonia Gandhi to ask her to be part of the Federal Front and spoke to her about her ‘one-to-one’ formula.
A day after she met a bouquet of Opposition MPs in an escalated effort to build a coalition in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee met former Congress President Sonia Gandhi to ask her to be part of the Federal Front, and spoke to her about her ‘one-to-one’ formula.
On Tuesday, landing at the Parliament on day one of her three-day visit, the Bengal leader was unable to meet Sonia despite making a bid to do so, as the former Congress chief had already left the Parliament. On Wednesday, however, she walked into 10 Janpath with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.
Once outside, Mamata said that she inquired Sonia of her health, as usual. “Whenever I come here I meet her, we share a good relation. I enquired about her health. We also had a political discussion,” she said, adding that she sought the Congress’s help for one-to-one fight.
“Alliances will depend on the political parties. They will decide, and that will continue. But we want that the strong political party in the region does a one-is-to-one fight so that the BJP is removed from the country. The BJP, other than carrying out a political vendetta, is not doing anything else for the people,” Mamata told reporters.
With the Karnataka Assembly elections in May, Mamata said that with the Congress having a stronghold there, other parties should make way for them. “I want that Congress wins in Karnataka because Congress is strong there. In UP, we want that Akhilesh-Mayawati wins, and Laluji in Bihar… If there is one is to one, then the BJP will go. That we are 100 percent sure,” said Mamata.
Earlier in the day, she met rebel BJP leaders Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Singh, and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. While Kejriwal remained mum about the meet, Shourie said that the Opposition sticks to the one-is-to-one fight against the BJP, then they will have access to over 69% of the vote bank, because the BJP’s vote share in 2014 was 31%.
“As for the Federal Front leadership, a leader will evolve from among the opposition when the time comes,” said Shourie. He also said that Congress needs to cooperate with other parties, and added that in Tripura if the Congress had gone ahead with Mamata’s offer of a coalition, it would have fared better. In Tripura, the TMC and the Congress’s pre-poll alliance discussions fell through with Congress not willing to let go of more than 5-6 seats in the 60-member Assembly. Consequently, the Congress drew a blank in the state.
Shatrughan Sinha, while dismissing rumours of him leaving the party, said that, “Neta sey bada party hota hai; aur party se bada desh (The party is bigger than any politician and the country is bigger than any party).” Yashwant Sinha said that he was simply meeting a former colleague and that he was with Mamata in her bid to “transform” the nation.
He added that not too much should be read into it. Later in the evening, he tweeted that his meeting has upset the trolls and that they are resorting to online abuse. “Shows that the message has gone home,” he tweeted.
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 "Mamata Banerjee")
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