Opposition unity: Nitish to meet Mamata in Kolkata, Akhilesh in Lucknow

Patna/Kolkata, April 23 (IANS) Taking forward his bid to unite opposition parties of the country, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is going to meet his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday.

Sources have said that Nitish Kumar will go to Kolkata by special flight in the afternoon and meet Banerjee. He will discuss the points on which opposition parties are uniting against the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

It is expected that he will stay for three to four hours in Kolkata, including one and half or two hours meeting with his West Bengal counterpart.

However, leaders of Banerjee's Trinamool Congress had earlier pegged the Nitish Kumar-Banerjee meeting for April 25.

Trinamool insiders said that Nitish Kumar is supposed to come to Kolkata on Tuesday morning and there is a high possibility of his meeting with Banerjee at the latter's Kalighat residence in south Kolkata on the same evening.

A member of the West Bengal cabinet said that the meeting will focus on the unity of opposition forces against BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

In the last couple of months, 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 in the 2024 polls.

Last month, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav met her in Kalighat.

In the meeting, the two leaders agreed to maintain a distance with Congress and rather focus on the unity of the regional forces against BJP in the 2024 polls.

Soon after meeting Akhilesh Yadav, Banerjee went to Odisha and had a meeting with her counterpart Naveen Patnaik.

This was followed by a visit to Kolkata by Janata Dal-Secular leader H.D. Kumaraswamy during which he met Banerjee.

Last week, she also called up her counterpart in Tamil Nadu M.K. Stalin and discussed the unity of opposition forces against the role of Governors in the opposition-ruled state in the country.

In the recent past, Banerjee, in all her public meetings, stressed that if the opposition gets united before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, then it is possible to bring an end to the BJP-led regime.

However, she has always avoided the tricky issue of whether Congress is a part of her blueprint of united opposition against BJP.

Meanwhile, as per the JD-U, after meeting Banerjee, Nitish Kumar will go straight away to Lucknow to meet Akhilesh Yadav and discuss the same points.

Nitish Kumar earlier met Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, left party leaders D Raja and Sitaram Yechury to discuss opposition unity.