Bhubaneswar: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee will be visiting Jagannath temple in Odisha’s Puri town on Wednesday.
As it was raining heavily, she did not go to the 12th-century shrine after arriving in Odisha on a three-day tour on Tuesday when she was received by Minister of State for Home Tusharkant Behera. She was then escorted to government PWD bungalow Nirman Nivas and took a stroll on the beach in the evening and ‘Mahaprasad’ for dinner.
The Shri Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) in consultation with the servitor have rescheduled the timings of afternoon rituals to morning in the shrine to facilitate her visit in the afternoon. As a result, the temple remained closed for devotees for five hours in the morning.
The chief minister’s family priest Jagannath Swain Mahapatra will perform the rituals for her in the temple. She is also scheduled to witness the fashioning of the flag on 214 feet high ‘Nilachakra’ and then offer prayers to goddess Vimala, Mahalaxmi and other deities on the shrine premises.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Bengal CM is an ardent devotee of Lord Jagannath and had visited the Puri temple in 2017. Hours before the 2021 WB poll schedules were announced by the Election Commission of India, a group of priests from the 12th-century shrine in Puri had performed a yagna at Mamata’s residence in Kolkata.
She also plans to visit Baliapanda area where the proposed Bengal guesthouse will be constructed.
Her itinerary also includes a meeting with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, which Mamta prefers to call “a courtesy call”, on Thursday. “Naveen ji is our senior leader, we will meet him,” she told mediapersons.
Though Trinamool insiders believe that a discussion on an alliance of regional parties is also expected, Naveen has denied any talks on a third front for 2024 elections. “Not on the agenda,” he said.
However, speculation abounded regarding the nature of discussion against the backdrop of Mamata’s meeting with former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, who pledged to stand behind her while maintaining equidistant from BJP and Congress.
To take the discussion on the Third Front ahead, she will be meeting former Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy at her residence on March 24. Trinamool leadership has made it clear that the party will reach out to other like-minded parties.
The BJD, however, has been downplaying the meeting and maintaining that there is nothing political about it.
Notably, the ruling regional party in Odisha has so far skipped all meetings aimed at forging a third front. While Naveen Patnaik-led BJD has been supporting the Narendra Modi dispensation at the Centre in almost all issues since 2019, the state units of the parties are slowly taking an aggressive stand against each other ahead of 2024 elections.
