Mamata Banerjee said this on the next India Block meeting on 6 December
Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee may not attend the upcoming meeting of the opposition India Bloc on December 6, as the party supremo said on Monday that she was not aware of any such meeting. The December 6 meeting will take place after a gap of three months following the previous meetings held in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1. Addressing the media on Monday, the West Bengal CM said her party was unaware that the India Group was planning to hold the meeting in New Delhi. “I don’t know, I don’t have any information so I scheduled a program in North Bengal… If we had the information, we would not have scheduled those programs. We would have definitely gone (for the meeting), but we have not received any information,” the TMC chief said.
Ahead of the next meeting, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge called his alliance partners and invited them to unite. Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction) leader Supriya Sule indicated after the Mumbai meeting that the next meeting will be held in the national capital. Seat sharing for the Lok Sabha elections, which are just four to five months away, is likely to top the agenda.
The next Indian block meeting will also be important for the Congress, especially after the party lost the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, Hindi belt states that send a large number of members to Parliament. However, this meeting may pose problems for the Congress, as the key ally Samajwadi Party has adopted an aggressive tone against the Congress in the assembly elections. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had accused Congress of betraying SP by not giving him ticket to contest elections in a possible alliance with Congress in Madhya Pradesh. If Congress has any hope of taking on Narendra Modi and BJP in the 2024 elections, then it is in dire need of an alliance now. India or ‘Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’ is a group of 28 opposition parties including Congress. The parties have come together to take on PM Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and prevent it from winning a third consecutive term at the Center in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The first meeting of the joint opposition was held on 23 June in Patna and the second meeting was held on 17-18 July in Bengaluru.
The third meeting was held in Mumbai during 31 August-1 September. At the Mumbai meeting, the opposition parties adopted a resolution to contest the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections collectively, while declaring that the seat-sharing arrangement will be finalized as soon as possible through a spirit of give and take. To take on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, he has chosen the theme for the elections “Judega Bharat, Jeetega India” (India will unite, India will win).
