Mamata Banerjee To Visit Odisha, Likely To Meet Naveen Patnaik

Bhubaneswar: West Bengal Chief Minister and All India Trinamool Congress President Mamata Banerjee will undertake a visit to Odisha this month when she is likely to call on her counterpart Naveen Patnaik.

According to soruces, Mamata is slated to reach Bhubaneswar on March 21 evening and make a night-stay there.

On March 22, Mamata Banerjee will go to Puri and offer prayers at Shree Jagannath Temple in the pilgrim town. On March 23, before taking the return flight to Kolkata from Bhubaneswar, there is a possibility of her meeting with Naveen Patnaik, Trinamool Congress sources were quoted by IANS as saying.

However, it is yet to be known whether there has been confirmation from the office of the Odisha Chief Minister, who is also the president of Biju Janata Dal (BJD), about the meeting.

The possibilities of the one-to-one meeting between Mamata and Naveen has sparked speculation of the West Bengal CM’s initiative to forge an alliance of regional parties for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls without keeping Congress in the proposed combine.

Political observers feel that if the meeting between Mamata and Naveen finally happens, it will signal an interesting turn in the field of opposition politics in the country considering the different outlook of BJD and Trinamool Congress on this count.

On one hand, Naveen-led BJD has been maintaining an independent identity of its own and keeping an equal distance from both BJP and Congress.

On the other hand, Trinamool Congress has been quite vocal against BJP and wants a unity of opposition parties, its definition of opposition alliance is the unity of regional parties without Congress in the game.