Mamata & Abhishek to join Oppn leaders meet in Patna on June 23

Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee along with several prominent Opposition leaders are holding a meeting at Patna convened by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on June 23, Friday for forging a grand alliance of anti-BJP parties to defeat the saffron brigade in the 2024 Parliamentary elections.

TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee will be accompanying his party supremo at the meeting.

Mamata is scheduled to reach Patna on Thursday, a day ahead of the grand Opposition meeting along with Abhishek.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi are also expected to attend the meeting which will be held at the Aney Marg, residence of Kumar. The meeting will start at 11 am with Kumar being the first speaker.

Akhilesh Yadav, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, Uddhav Thackeray, NCP Chief Sharad Pawar, Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, CPI general secretary D Raja, Sitaram Yechury and Dipankar Bhattacharya are also expected to attend the meeting.

The meeting was earlier scheduled to be held on June 12 but was postponed to June 23.

According to sources, the meeting was pushed back as several Opposition leaders, including Kharge and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, had expressed their inability to attend the meeting on June 12, citing prior engagements and preoccupations.

Banerjee who held a meeting with Kumar at Nabanna on April 24 had requested the latter to hold a meeting of the Opposition in Patna. She cited the instance of Jayaprakash Narayan whose movement had begun in Bihar in the 1970s.

“I have always reiterated that BJP should be brought down to zero. They have become huge heroes with the help of the media and the fake narratives that they push day in, day out. All they indulge is in ‘jumlas’ and goondaism,” she had said while addressing the media with Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav by her side.

Banerjee has already held similar meetings with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and former Karnataka chief minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader H D Kumaraswamy in March with the common objective of forging Opposition unity.