Mamata Banerjee may meet Sharad Pawar today; Aaditya Thackeray and Sanjay Raut call on Bengal CM in Mumbai

KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday met Maharashtra environment minister Aaditya Thackeray and Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut during her two-day Mumbai visit. She is expected to call on NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday.
The meetings with Sena and NCP come in the backdrop of Trinamool Congress’s foray into Goa assembly polls in February 2022 in which Banerjee is likely to campaign along with party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. Trinamool is also trying to expand its base in Tripura and Meghalaya, where assembly polls are scheduled in 2023.
The party is slowly distancing itself from a Congress-led opposition bloc at the national level. Banerjee’s meeting with Pawar will be her first after winning the Bengal elections this May.
The CM’s first stop was Siddhivinayak temple in Dadar. Talking to reporters later, Banerjee prayed for speedy recovery of Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray. “I am thankful to priests and trustees of the temple and the Maharashtra government. I was very happy since they organised the darshan very well. Jai Maratha and Jai Bangla,” Banerjee said.
Political analysts interpreted this as the Trinamool chief throwing her weight behind Sena ahead of the BMC polls.
Aaditya said Sena and Trinamool had an old and special relationship. “We came to welcome her in Mumbai. We had a courtesy meeting and we discussed many things. There is a special relation between CM Uddhav Thackeray and Mamata Didi. There has been coordination between them even on Covid. Since CM Thackeray is in a bio-bubble, I came to meet her. We will take our relationship forward,” he said after the meeting.
Banerjee was to meet Thackeray. “I wanted to meet him. But as he has undergone an operation, doctors are unwilling to allow visitors for fear of infection. So, I cannot meet him,” she said in Kolkata before flying to Mumbai.
On Wednesday, the Bengal CM will meet prominent personalities in Mumbai in a meeting coordinated by poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar and Sudheendra Kulkarni. They had met her earlier this month in Delhi.
Later, Banerjee is expected to meet Pawar and then attend the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO), which will have leading industrialists in attendance. “I will invite them for BGBS,” she said.
Industrialists from Bengal who would be in Mumbai to showcase their success stories include RP-Sanjiv Goenka group chairman Sanjiv Goenka, Ambuja Neotia group chairman Harshvardhan Neotia, Tarun JhunJhunwala of Reliance, Luxmi Group MD Rudra Chatterjee, Patton MD Sanjay Budhia, Bengal Aerotropolis director Utsav Parekh, Dhunseri group chairman C K Dhanuka, Tega India MD Mehul Mohanka, among others. All of them would attend the YPO meeting.
Raut tweeted: “Met Mamata Banerjee along with Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray. Politics and Bengal-Maharashtra relations were discussed. Maharashtra and Bengal are warring states and will not bow down, she said. It’s always a great pleasure to meet the Tigress of Bengal... Mamataji has prayed at Siddhivinayak for UddhavJi’s health.”
TMC has refrained from publicly responding to statements attributed to former Goa CM and NCP MLA Alemao Churchill on a possible switchover to the party. Churchill had defected to Trinamool earlier and fought the 2014 Lok Sabha polls but lost. He had then defected to NCP and won in the Goa assembly polls.