KOLKATA: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar met West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata on Monday. They stressed that opposition parties need to shed their egos to unite against the BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
After the meeting, the Chief Ministers addressed the media and stressed for Opposition unity which has to be achieved by shedding individual egos.
“We are always together. The BJP has become the hero and there is a need to convert them into zero. There is no question of personal ego. Nitish has already started holding talks with the different opposition parties. I am also holding similar discussions with others. In the coming days we will move together,” Banerjee said.
Echoing her, Nitish Kumar said that all the anti-BJP opposition parties will have to united before the 2024 elections. “Let us all sit together and discuss how to move ahead in the coming days. We had an extremely fruitful discussion and we have agreed that all will have to get united and move together,” he said.
“Nothing is being done for India’s development, those ruling are only interested in their own advertisement,” Kumar added.
The meeting between the two leaders at meeting in state secretariat Nabanna, which was also attended by Bihar’s deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, was described as “positive”.
While details of the discussion were scanty with the leaders preferring to speak on the broader consensus, sources said the two sides used the meeting to figure out how they would proceed in sewing together a coalition that would be workable ahead of the elections.
While the Trinamool Congress has already made it clear that the Congress does not fit in their formula of an Opposition alliance, Nitish Kumar has been actively interacting with the top party leaders, including national president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Opposition leaders have been critical of rising unemployment, the falling value of the rupee and rising prices as well as the spending on government advertisements.
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(With PTI and IANS inputs)
