Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee left Monday evening for Lucknow to campaign for Samajwadi Party (SP). She will give a call to the people of Uttar Pradesh to defeat the BJP in the coming Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. Mamata Banerjee will be holding a joint press conference with Akhilesh Yadav, the national president of SP. She will also address a virtual rally in Lucknow, February 8, according to sources in the party.
“Akhilesh Yadav has invited me to go there and to campaign for SP. We (Trinamool Congress, TMC) want BJP to be defeated and Akhilesh to win in Uttar Pradesh. All of us should support him in the fight against the BJP. That is the reason we have decided not to contest in Uttar Pradesh this time,” Banerjee, also the TMC president, told reporters before leaving for Lucknow.
Banerjee said she will also visit Varanasi later in February but the date is yet to be fixed.
The fiesty TMC chief said though the party is contesting only in Goa in the February-March Assembly poll in five states, it will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Punjab.
Reacting to the development, Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari wondered whether SP supports the post-poll violence that was unleashed in the state after TMC’s assembly poll victory last year.
“BJP will return to power in Uttar Pradesh. And we would like to know whether Samajwadi Party supports the post-poll violence that was unleashed by TMC in Bengal? If no, then they (SP) should condemn it,” the BJP leader said.
During the high octane West Bengal Assembly polls, the SP had not contested. It extended its support to the ruling TMC.
Akhilesh shares a very cordial relationship with Banerjee. He had even attended the grand opposition meeting hosted by the TMC supremo in January, 2019.