West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will not be attending an opposition dinner on July 17 as she has to follow post-surgery protocols, but will be part of the daylong meeting of the parties on July 18, sources in her Trinamool Congress (TMC) said on Saturday.
Banerjee underwent microsurgery on her left knee at the state-run SSKM hospital in Kolkata on Thursday. The TMC chief suffered a ligament injury on her left knee during the emergency landing of her helicopter at the Sevoke Airbase in north Bengal on June 27.
“While her doctors have given her permission to fly and attend the opposition summit, she has been advised to rest. So she will skip the dinner but will attend the daylong meeting on July 18,” a source in the TMC said.
A dinner for the opposition parties has been planned by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on July 17.
TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien will be accompanying the West Bengal chief minister to the summit and are likely to attend the dinner as her representatives, the sources said.
In line with her doctor’s advice, Banerjee will return to Kolkata soon after the summit.
This will be the first time that the top leadership of the TMC, Congress and Left parties will meet after a violence-marred rural poll battle in West Bengal.
Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi will participate in the second meeting of opposition parties in Bengaluru on July 18 (Monday). Twenty-four opposition parties, including the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), have been invited to the meeting.
The first opposition meeting, which was attended by around 15 parties, took place in Patna and was hosted by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Since then, a split in Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and his nephew Ajit Pawar’s switch to the Eknath Shinde-BJP coalition in Maharashtra is seen to have dampened the opposition unity bid somewhat.
However, parties such as the Congress and the TMC have shown their support for the senior Pawar and said the opposition unity has strengthened further.
Sources claimed that eight parties that were not part of the first opposition meeting in Patna will join Monday’s deliberations in Bengaluru.
These are the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), Kongu Desa Makkal Katchi (KDMK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), All India Forward Bloc, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Kerala Congress (Joseph) and Kerala Congress (Mani).
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