Abhishek Banerjee Meets Akhilesh Yadav, Uddhav Thackeray After Poll Results

Trinamool Congress (TMC) general secretary Abhishek Banerjee met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Delhi on Thursday and later, he flew to Mumbai to meet Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray.

Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, along with O’Brien met Yadav at his residence in Delhi in the morning.

A source said that both the TMC general secretary and the Samajwadi Party chief were in “complete agreement on the way forward”.

Later in the day, Abhishek Banerjee met Mr Thackeray at his residence ‘Matoshree’ in Mumbai. The meeting lasted for around 90 minutes.

While not commenting on what transpired in the meetings, Mr O’Brien said Prime Minister Modi and his government have been rejected.

“Mr Modi’s BJP ran the government in India for 10 years. He and his government have been rejected. That is the starting point. We move forward from here,” he told reporters.

Another TMC leader pointed out that theirs is the only party in the INDIA bloc that fought solo while all others had seat-sharing agreements in some state or the other.

TMC sources have claimed that they are in touch with three BJP MPs from West Bengal as well. The claim has been denied by the BJP.

On Wednesday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the INDIA bloc will take “appropriate steps at the appropriate time” to realise people’s desire not to be ruled by the BJP. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)