LUCKNOW: West Bengal chief minister and All India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Monday was all support for SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and said she would like to see his party win the UP elections.
The statement came minutes before she boarded a flight from Kolkata to Lucknow on Monday evening. At Lucknow airport, she was accorded a warm welcome by Akhilesh Yadav and a host of senior SP leaders, including party vice-president Kiranmoy Nanda, national secretary Rajendra Chaudhary and state president Naresh Uttam Patel.
While Akhilesh welcomed her with a bouquet, Mamata presented her with a gift brought from Bengal. Later Akhilesh tweeted that after they had joined hands and defeated the BJP in West Bengal and promised to Didi that together they we will defeat them in UP as well.
In Lucknow, Mamata will address a press conference with Akhilesh at the SP headquarters on Tuesday and hold a meeting with TMC’s UP unit before she is expected to fly back to Kolkata.
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Before boarding the flight in Kolkata, Mamata said: “We (TMC) want BJP to be defeated and Akhilesh to win Uttar Pradesh. All of us should support him in the fight against the BJP. That is the reason we have decided not to contest in Uttar Pradesh this time.” She had already announced that her party will contest the next Lok Sabha polls in UP as well.
Earlier Samajwadi Party chief had said that he would like to see Mamata Banerjee campaign for SP in UP as she had defeated BJP by sweeping the assembly elections in West Bengal last year. In the run up to these elections, Kiranmay Nanda and SP’s Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bachchan had campaigned for the TMC. Banerjee also campaigned for the SP in the 2017 assembly polls in Lucknow.
