KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress will go its own way, maintaining distance from both the Congress and BJP, senior Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay said here Friday after a meeting of party leaders. He, however, said the party was not “talking of a third front at the moment”, while warning that the Congress should not believe it was the ‘big boss’ of the opposition.
Following the meeting at TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee’s residence, Bandopadhyay said that in the coming days, the party would hold deliberations with “powerful regional parties” to formulate a strategy to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
“We will go our own way, maintain distance from the Congress and the BJP. We are not talking about forming any third front at the moment… The Congress should not feel that it is the big boss of the opposition front,” he told reporters here.
“Mamata Banerjee will meet powerful regional parties to fight the BJP,” Bandopadhyay said.
He said that both in panchayat polls slated for this year and in the Lok Sabha elections scheduled next year, the party would prove to the country how it can single-handedly stop the BJP in West Bengal.
On the other hand, Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav on Friday called on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at her residence here and held a meeting. Yadav, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, was accompanied by SP national vice-president Kiranmoy Nanda.
Yadav had lent his party’s support to the TMC during the 2021 West Bengal assembly poll, which was reciprocated by Banerjee when she campaigned for the former in Uttar Pradesh during the 2022 election in that state.
