The West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC Supremo- Mamata Banerjee has accepted the offer to campaign for Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad.
Actually, Mamata Banerjee was the one who suggested that Priyanka run from Varanasi; in fact, Rahul Gandhi has since repeated the proposal.
The event transpired subsequent to a meeting between Mamata Banerjee and seasoned Congressman P Chidambaram at the state secretariat in Kolkata. According to sources, Chidambaram arrived as a Gandhian envoy.
The TMC chairman, who is furious with the Congress, especially pointed the finger at State Party chairman Adhir Chowdhury for the collapse of the Congress-TMC coalition negotiations.
With the exception of the Congress, TMC’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee has been working nonstop to meet with members of INDIA’s constituent parties in an effort to bring them together on a variety of topics following the party’s historic victory in Bengal, where it won 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats.
Banerjee first met with AAP leader Raghav Chadha and Samajwadi Party chairman Akhilesh Yadav in New Delhi before taking a plane to Mumbai to see Uddhav Thackeray. A TMC delegation led by MPs Saket Gokale, Sagarika Ghose, and Kalyan Banerjee met NCP chief Sharad Pawar earlier this week in Mumbai and participated in a joint protest calling for a SEBI investigation into claims of stock market manipulation on election day. Once more, Congress stayed out of the agitation.
Fearful of such actions, and hoping to appease the TMC, the third-biggest opposition party with 29 MPs, the Congress leadership dispatched Chidambaram to have face-to-face discussions with Mamata Banerjee and iron out the issues.
“In 2011, ahead of the Bengal Assembly elections, I told Sonia Gandhi that Congress must get into an alliance with the TMC to fight the Left. I had told her that Mamata Banerjee is the most credible face in Bengal and that we must align with her, and we would do well if Congress-TMC ties up. I don’t have any personal difference with Mamata Banerjee, it is purely political,” Chowdhury said, to the surprise of many.
Known for his unwavering anti-Mamata stance, the Bengal Congress under Adhir Chowdhury lost badly in the Lok Sabha elections. The five-time MP’s partnership with the CPIM could not even help him win the seat in Baharampur, which he lost to Yusuf Pathan, a political outsider.
Chowdhury obviously has very little choice but to temper his rhetoric, feel many, as the Congress high command is once again going all out to appease Mamata Banerjee.
