TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee to attend INDIA bloc meeting instead of Mamata Banerjee | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is officially back in the INDIA bloc, day after the elections results were out, with 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in its kitty.
The West Bengal chief minister has deputed her nephew and TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee to attend the INDIA bloc meeting on Wednesday called at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence here.
While TMC went alone at the hustings the party chief has blamed Congress’ Bengal leader Adhir Ranjan Choudhury for dropping out of the INDIA bloc even while campaigning through the seven-phased poll rallies, she has at several public meetings come out in open support of the Congress and its leaders including Rahul Gandhi.
Almost at all the poll rallies Mamata Banerjee mentioned that her party is part of the INDIA bloc, that she was an initiator of the INDIA alliance, that she had proposed the name… to align with the main opposition bloc, sending home a clear message that the anti-Modi fight for the 18^th Lok Sabha was a joint effort and TMC was very much part of it.
Interestingly, no central Congress leaders campaigned for Congress candidates including party’s state chief Choudhury in his Berhampur constituency that he lost to TMC, which is seen as a deliberate move by Congress leadership to avoid any animosity with Mamata Banerjee.
Hence, even as TMC and Congress fought against each other in Bengal, Banerjee ensured that her party is represented by her second-in-command at Wednesday’s meeting.