West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee agreed to Congress’s request to campaign for Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad. The development has set aside her differences with the party, according to the sources.
It was, in fact, revealed that Mamata Banerjee had pitched the idea for Priyanka to contest from Varanasi.
The news came after the meeting between veteran Congress leader P Chidambaram and Mamata Banerjee at the state secretariat in Kolkata. According to the sources, Chidambaram came as an emissary of the Gandhis.
The TMC chairman, who is furious with the Congress, especially pointed the finger at State Party chairman Adhir Chowdhury for the collapse of the Congress-TMC coalition negotiations.
With the exception of the Congress, TMC's second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee has been working nonstop to meet with members of INDIA's constituent parties in an effort to bring them together on a variety of topics following the party's historic victory in Bengal, where it won 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats.
Banerjee first met with AAP leader Raghav Chadha and Samajwadi Party chairman Akhilesh Yadav in New Delhi before taking a plane to Mumbai to see Uddhav Thackeray.
Earlier this week, a TMC delegation comprising MPs Kalyan Banerjee, Sagarika Ghose and Saket Gokale met NCP supremo Sharad Pawar in Mumbai and took part in a joint demonstration demanding a SEBI probe into alleged stock market manipulation on exit poll day. Once again, Congress was not involved in the agitation.
Apprehensive about such moves, and in a bid to pacify the TMC, which is the third-largest opposition party with 29 MPs, the Congress top brass sent Chidambaram to hold direct talks with Mamata Banerjee and resolve the differences.