Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik Tweets After Meeting Nitish Kumar Over Odia Lunch

Bhubaneswar: Bihar chief minister Nitish arrived in Bhubaneswar around noon on Tuesday and drove straight to Naveen Niwas for luncheon with his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik.

Sharing some pictures from the meeting, Naveen later tweeted: “Glad to meet #Bihar Chief Minister Shri @NitishKumar in #Bhubaneswar. #Odisha shares a special bond with Bihar and the people of the neighbouring state. Hope he had a pleasant and fruitful stay in Odisha.”

Nitish is spearheading Opposition unity talks to cobble up a grand opposition alliance against the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This meeting too is a part of the efforts to bring all non-NDA parties together and the two CMs were expected to discuss a wide range of political issue. Nitish was served Odia food at lunch, sources said.

Later speaking to the media, Naveen said that no discussion was held over forming any alliance. “The Odishs 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.

The Bihar CM will be meeting Shard Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray later this week.

The BJD, which has been maintaining distance from both BJP and Congress, has avoided tilting either towards the NDA or evolving non-BJP alliance so far. The ruling party of Odisha has so far skipped all meetings aimed at forging a third front. While the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD has been supporting the Narendra Modi government at the Centre in almost all issues since 2019, the state units of the two parties are gradually adopting an aggressive stand against each other ahead of the twin polls.

Notably, Nitish and Naveen were once cabinet colleagues in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. They had met on March 7, 2017, when JD-U & RJD had an alliance government in Bihar and not much politics was discussed even at that meeting, the sources added.