West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday, with the two leaders agreeing to “work unitedly to fight the BJP”. The Congress however has no role to play in this new front, with Yadav asserting that the other party could do as they pleased.
“Regional parties are competent enough to decide their roles. the Congress has to decide its role. Nobody should take any step which might have any adverse impact (on fighting the BJP),” he said.
As he put it, the issue at hand was ‘removing’ the BJP, and not who will be in the front. “Both the parties would also maintain distance from the Congress,” senior SP leader Kiranmoy Nanda added in conversation with PTI after the meeting.
“Topic is not who will be in front, topic is that BJP – which is destroying the country – should be removed…This position (PM) is big we all will sit together and discuss it later. We are aiming to get 80 on 80 in UP, we are with didi (Mamata Banerjee) to defeat BJP,” the SP chief said.
Meanwhile, TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay said that 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.
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