After skipping last year's virtual meet of Niti Aayog, Bengal CM Mamata to attend meeting this time in Delhi

NEW DELHI: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to visit Delhi in the first week of August, coinciding with the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief will be here to attend the Niti Aayog governing council meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 7, but she is expected to spend a couple of extra days here to hold a meeting of her own party MPs, besides meeting other opposition party leaders, according to the party sources.
Significantly, the Bengal CM, who didn’t attend last year’s Niti Aayog meeting, held virtually, on the grounds that it yields no result for the states, will be meeting PM Modi at a time when one of her cabinet ministers, Partha Chatterjee, is being investigated by Enforcement Directorate.
The aayog meeting between the chief ministers and the PM is also being held at a time when the non-BJP ruled states, including Bengal, have been accusing the Centre of non-payment of Goods and Services Tax dues and flouting federal norms. The Bengal CM has also alleged the BJP-ruled states are being given extra benefits by depriving her state with regard to central schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
Meanwhile, Banerjee’s party has decided to break ranks with the opposition parties to abstain from the vice-presidential elections instead of going for the joint V-P candidate Margaret Alva, even as the TMC joined the ranks to start a 50-hour opposition dharna at the Parliament on Wednesday. In that backdrop, the TMC chief is expected to be communicating with the opposition parties who had come together during the Presidential polls on her initiative.
It is therefore to be seen whether Banerjee rebuilds her bridges with Congress and a few other opposition parties, even as TMC is part of the opposition camp in Parliament coordinating floor management on issues against the government.
The TMC chief has been upset with the Congress and its allies taking decisions in the opposition camp without consulting her party.