Crucial Nitish Kumar-Mamata Banerjee meeting likely on April 25

Kolkata: A crucial meeting between West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar will likely take place on April 25.

Trinamool Congress insiders said that Nitish Kumar is supposed to come to Kolkata on Tuesday morning and there is a high possibility of his meeting with Mamata Banerjee at the latter's Kalighat residence in South Kolkata on the same evening.

A member of the West Bengal cabinet said that the meeting will harp on the unity of opposition forces against the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

In the last couple of months, Mamata Banerjee has had an array of meetings with a number of non-BJP and non-Congress leaders on the issue of opposition unity against the BJP in the 2024 polls.

Last month, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav met her in Kalighat. In the meeting, the two leaders agreed to maintain a distance from Congress and rather focus on the unity of the regional forces against the BJP in the 2024 polls.

Soon after meeting Akhilesh, Mamata Banerjee went to Odisha and had a meeting with her counterpart Naveen Patnaik.

This was followed by a visit to Kolkata by Janata Dal (Secular) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy during which he met Banerjee.

Last week, she also called up her counterpart in Tamil Nadu M.K. Stalin and discussed the unity of opposition forces against the role of Governors in the opposition-ruled state in the country.

In the recent past, Mamata Banerjee, in all her public meetings, stressed that if the opposition gets united before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, then it is possible to bring an end to the BJP-led regime.

However, she has always avoided the tricky issue of whether Congress is a part of her blueprint of a united opposition against the BJP.