West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Kolkata: The glitzy wedding ceremony of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant in Mumbai on Friday will have a political sideshow.
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee left for Mumbai on Thursday, primarily to attend the wedding of Nita and Mukesh Ambani’s youngest son, Anant Ambani, with Radhika Merchant.
But she will also meet fellow I.N.D.I.A. leaders Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray, and Akhilesh Singh during her stay in Mumbai.
“I am going to Mumbai as you all know Mukesh Ambani Ji's son is getting married,” Banerjee told journalists in Kolkata before leaving for Mumbai. “They have extended the invitation multiple times, and Mukesh Ambani Ji has attended the Biswa Bangla convention multiple times upon Bengal's invitation.”
“I might not have gone. But they all, including Mukesh Ji, his son, and Neeta Ji, have repeatedly invited me. That is why I decided to go,” she said.
The TMC supremo also said that she would meet Uddhav Thackeray, the chief of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), in Mumbai on Friday for “political talks” as they had not met after the Lok Sabha elections.
Banerjee said that she would also meet the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) supremo Sharad Pawar at his residence in Mumbai.
“I will also go to Sharad Ji's place and have made an appointment to meet him as well. Akhilesh (Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav) is also coming (to Mumbai) tomorrow (Friday) and I could meet him as well,” the TMC supremo said.
The SP chief is also likely to attend the wedding of the Reliance Industries Limited chairman and managing director.
Banerjee did not attend the first meeting the I.N.D.I.A. had on June 5 – a day after the Lok Sabha elections results were out. She, however, sent her nephew and heir apparent, Abhishek Banerjee, to take part in it.
Abhishek, the general secretary of the TMC, not only attended the I.N.D.I.A. conclave but also had separate meetings with Akhilesh in Delhi and Thackeray in Mumbai. The move signalled the TMC’s keenness to keep a ginger group active within the opposition alliance as a counterweight to the Congress, which won 99 seats in the Lok Sabha.
Banerjee led her Trinamool Congress to win in 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in West Bengal in the recent parliamentary elections, seven more than its 2019 tally. Though the TMC remained a part of I.N.D.I.A. at the national level, it went solo in its home turf West Bengal, without any electoral understanding with the other constituents of the opposition bloc, like the Congress or the CPI (M).
She rather accused the leaders of the state units of the Congress and the CPI(M) of colluding with the BJP against the TMC.
The BJP won 12 LS seats from West Bengal, six less than its 2019 score. The Congress won just one while the CPI(M) could not win in any constituency in the state.