MAMATA’s Delhi Sojourn Expected To Be Significant
With deteriorating relations between the BJP heading the federal government and the West Bengal’s ruling party, TMC supremo and the state’s mercurial Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is arriving in the national capital on July 25. During her maiden visit to Delhi after the 2021 assembly polls, she will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Ramnath Kovind besides dialogue with like-minded leaders of various political parties to float a front at the national level to take on the surging BJP in the 2024 Parliamentary elections as per her announcement KHELA HOBE till BJP is wiped out. Ahead of her arrival in the national capital, All India TMC’s second in command Abhishek Banerjee and poll strategist Prashant Kishor popularly called PK in media and political circles have arrived in Delhi and finetuned the party’s strategy to be followed in the ongoing Monsoon session of Parliament scheduled to be concluded on August 13. They have adopted an aggressive stance on media revelation of Pegasus snooping politicians, journalists and others critical of the Modi Government, skyrocketing prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas and what they call continuous weakening of the democratic institutions besides mismanagement of covid 19 problems. In the ongoing Monsoon session, interestingly the principal Opposition Congress hemmed by Gandhis is providing the TMC parliamentarians with the much-needed cooperation. Meanwhile, efforts are on to have a conclave of the leaders of the political parties including TMC who will pledge to sail together for dethroning BJP led NDA Sarkar. “Mamata Banerjee is not coming to Delhi to try Pani Puri at the Gol Market. She is coming here for serious political business” says Derek O’Brien, Leader of TMC Parliamentary Group. Meanwhile, Amnesty on Pegasus claims ‘All numbers in the list are not linked to NSO.’ Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi citing reports claimed that Amnesty International, the human rights group associated with Pegasus Project, has denied the existence of a list of potential targets of the alleged snooping. Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters, she alleged that the “fake” list is like a collection of mobile numbers drawn from yellow pages and those have been used for “yellow journalism”. She was referring to news reports about the suspected snooping of people, including politicians and journalists, in India and several other countries. Edited by PK Chakravarty