Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik hosted his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar, who drove to his residence after arriving at Biju Patnaik international Airport in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday afternoon.
The CMs exchanged gifts. While Nitish presented Naveen with a traditional shawl, the latter gave a Silver Filigree Konark Wheel memento. Later, they savoured Odia lunch with 5T secretary VK Pandian at Naveen Niwas.
The meeting had created a lot of buzz since Nitish is on a mission to unite the opposition and cobble up a grand opposition alliance against the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This too was seen as a part of the efforts to bring all non-NDA parties together.
Speaking to the media, Naveen, however, said that no discussion was held over forming any alliance. “The Odisha government will provide land in Puri free of cost to Bihar so that a Bhavan can be built for devotees coming to offer prayers at Shri Jagannath Temple,” he added.
Nitish said that the ties are very old and so strong that no political discussions are required. “My relationship with Biju Babu and Naveen Ji is very old. Due to COVID, we could not meet. No political discussions were held during our meeting today,” he said.
In April this year, Nitish had announced his intention to travel across the country to unite opposition parties after meeting prominent opposition leaders in Delhi, including those from Congress and Left parties. He travelled to Kolkata to meet West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who herself had met Naveen Patnaik in March, and then went to Lucknow to meet Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav. He has already met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and Left leaders Sitaram Yechury and D Raja.
The Bihar CM will be meeting Shard Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray later this week.
Notably, Odisha has handed over 2-acre land to the Bengal government to set up ‘Banga Bhavan’ in Puri. Mamata had inspected the site during her visit on March 22.
