Mamata Banerjee to visit Punjab on February 11, hold meeting with AAP

Kolkata, Feb 14 (IANS) West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee will make a trip to Punjab on February 21.  

Party insiders said that besides offering prayers at the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Chief Minister is also expected to hold a meeting with her counterpart in Punjab, Bhagwant Mann.

“There is a possibility that the Aam Aadmi Party chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal would be present at the meeting,” said a senior party leader on condition of anonymity.

The said meeting in Punjab is extremely crucial given that Mamata Banerjee as well as the Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee had made it clear that the party would go it alone in West Bengal in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Similarly, the AAP leadership, too, had ruled out any possibility of a seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress in Punjab.

In such a situation, political observers say that the proposed meeting hints towards the initiation of an unofficial alternative front minus the Congress and Left Front.

While party insiders did not give any hints on these lines, they said that one of the important agendas of the meeting would be the newly-resurrected farmers’ protests on the borders of Delhi-NCR.

Mamata Banerjee has already expressed solidarity towards the farmers’ protest and launched a scathing attack against the Centre over the use of tear gas shells to disperse the growers and prevent them from entering Delhi at the Punjab-Haryana Shambhu border.

Political observers say the it would be interesting to see if in the coming days Mamata Banerjee visits other states and holds meetings with the top leadership of other regional parties.

--IANS

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