Dropping sufficient hints that Mamata Banerjee would now expand her area of influence to Gujarat so as to neutralise the saffron pressure on Trinamool Congress in her own State, the Bengal Chief Minister was planning to invite Patidar leader Hardik Patel to Kolkata.
This she reportedly made clear to her close colleagues hours after calling up and congratulating Patel for “your tremendous performance” in the recently concluded Assembly elections in the western State where in any case the BJP returned to power but with lesser seats and percentage of votes.
Banerjee said “he has done a tremendous work at this young age needs to be felicitated. So I called him up to congratulate him for the feat.” She also said that she would speak to other leaders like Alpesh Thakur and Jignesh Mevani for their “positive show.”
Banerjee had on Monday congratulated the people of Gujarat for giving a “balanced verdict” and added the people of the western State had finally “belled” the saffron cat with farfetched results which will be evident in 2019 when India would go to general elections.
Sources close to the Chief Minister said she was planning to facilitate Patel in Kolkata so as to “strike a strong bonding” with him in Gujarat, a step that will force the BJP to ease pressure on her in Bengal.
Currently a galaxy of Trinamool Congress leaders including MPs and Ministers were facing charges of corruption in chit fund and Narada pay-off cases and were under the CBI-ED scanner. The Trinamool expects a number of arrests before the next year’s panchayat polls and 2019 parliamentary elections, experts said.