KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to address party functionaries in Meghalaya on Tuesday (December 13) for preparing a roadmap for the Assembly elections in the northeastern state due early next year. TMC's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who had visited the state twice this year, will also be accompanying the chief minister, the party official said.
Led by former chief minister Mukul Sangma, 11 other MLAs of the Opposition Congress had shifted their political allegiance to the TMC in November last year making it the principal opposition party in this hill state. The polls to elect representatives to the 60-member House in the northeastern state are due before March 8.
The TMC supremo is set to address a party workers' convention at State Central Library here on December 13, a senior party leader said. Of the 12 MLAs who joined the TMC last year, Himalaya Shangpliang resigned from the Assembly and the party last month reducing the strength of the Trinamool Congress in the House to 11.
"Hon'ble Chairperson Smt. @MamataOfficial will be making her maiden visit to Shillong on the 12th of December 2022. She will be on a 2 day visit, where she will attend a host of different events. Shillong is waiting with bated breath to welcome our leader!" TMC tweeted.
A TMC functionary said that Mamata Banerjee's visit will boost the morale of the party workers ahead of the 2023 assembly elections. He said, "The people in Meghalaya are not happy with the National People's Party (NPP)-led government in the state. The ruling dispensation did nothing for the development of the state in the past five years and she will highlight the incompetence of the NPP to run the state."
Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with the Trinamool Congress' mouthpiece Jago Bangla, party's national spokesperson, Saket Gokhale—who was arrested twice by the Gujarat police for his tweet criticising Narendra Modi regarding the collapse of Morbi bridge which led to the death of 136 people— alleged that he was arrested not in connection with the bridge collapse but to know the party's strategy in Meghalaya, Goa and Tripura. The investigating officers wanted to know how Trinamool was going to launch the campaign in these states and how the party was going to implement it. Gokhale further alleged that his cell phone and other devices had been seized. The officers wanted to know who had given him the money for his heart surgery. Gokhale further alleged that some officers of the Gurajat police told him that they did not have any information to arrest him. He said he had not been asked anything about his tweet on the morbi bridge collapse but only on Trinamool Congress and its future policies in other states.