West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee to visit Delhi every 2 months to help forge opposition unity

NEW DELHI: With her target set at challenging the Narendra Modi government in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she will be back in Delhi “every two months” from now on to play an active role getting all opposition parties on a joint platform to fight the ruling BJP.
The Trinamool Congress chief said this just before leaving for Kolkata after a fourday stay in the national capital — essentially to meet other opposition party leaders and steer her party MPs during Parliament’s monsoon session — for the first time since her third-term victory in assembly polls.
Banerjee spoke to NCP chief Sharad Pawar over the phone before leaving. She met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the party’s former chief Rahul Gandhi, other leaders from Congress and other parties during her stay here.
“Today I talked to Sharad (Pawar) ji. He is going to Mumbai. Next time, we will be meeting. I feel my visit is a successful one. We met for political and development purposes. We will work together to save democracy. If democracy is under threat, then the country is under threat. Our slogan is ‘Loktantra Bachao, Desh Bachao’. I will come to Delhi every two months,” the Bengal CM told media before departing for the airport.
On opposition unity, Banerjee had on Wednesday said: “Nothing can be better than if we can achieve a political unity, joining hands together. I couldn’t meet all leaders this time; met many of them and the outcome is good. Let us work together.
Desh ko bachana hai (we have to save the country).”
On Friday, as she wrapped up her visit, Banerjee said: “Rising oil prices is a major concern... the Centre has taken Rs 3.7 lakh crore from people by raising petrol, diesel, gas prices. Farmers are on the roads for months, unemployment is rising drastically, Covid situation rising, nobody knows what will happen if the third wave of pandemic sets in. I have told the prime minister to please ensure that third wave doesn’t hit us and that people must get vaccinated.”
Banerjee, who was nominated Trinamool’s parliamentary party chairman just before she arrived in Delhi, has told her party MPs that the three most important issues to take up against the government in Parliament are the “Pegasus snooping issue, supporting the farmers’ agitation and demanding the repeal of the three farm laws, and price rise and unemployment that have hit the common people in a big way.”
The CM also met PM Modi and Union minister Nitin Gadkari during her trip, essentially over Bengal-related projects. But she had to skip calling on President Ramnath Kovind since the meeting would require RT-PCR test on her and she had said it would be difficult for her to get it done here at such short notice.
(With inputs from Rohit Khanna in Kolkata)