Calcutta, Dec. 3: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is supposed to visit Delhi next week, has sought an appointment with the Prime Minister, which several senior Trinamul leaders speculated was for making her displeasure known regarding the "misuse" of the CBI in the Saradha case.
Sources in Nabanna said that an appointment had already been sought at Mamata's behest. However, a response from the Prime Minister's Office was yet to arrive till this evening.
A Rajya Sabha member said the chief minister was well within her rights to meet the Prime Minister during a visit to the capital to discuss federal issues, allocation and disbursal of funds and policy matters. But several senior Trinamul leaders said she was likely to bring up her "displeasure" with the "misuse" of the CBI by the Centre.
A south Calcutta MLA said in order to have "leverage" at the meeting, Mamata had extended her support to the Patel community battling for reservations in Modi's state Gujarat. The face of the movement is Hardik Patel, with no identified political allegiance. The Patel movement is believed to have played a damaging role against the BJP in the Gujarat rural elections, where the party lost miserably yesterday to the Congress.
Mamata will be in Delhi between December 7 and 10. On December 11, she is supposed to meet Akhilesh Patel, who according to the Trinamul MLA, is "the right-hand man of Hardik". "Irrespective of whether she takes a stern stand before the Prime Minister on the CBI, or goes for calm negotiation, she will bring up the Patel movement and her support for it," the MLA said.
According to him, the party established contact with Akhilesh Patel and asked him to meet the chief minister in Calcutta next Friday.
"She (Mamata) has been impressed with Hardik's agitation and methods. She thinks he could be the next Arvind Kejriwal in the Gujarat context. After the rural results yesterday, she decided to formally stand by him," said a Lok Sabha member.
Hardik isn't aligned with any party, but the Congress has been using the agitation as an opportunity to hurt the BJP government in Gujarat.
"This is also in line with her (Mamata's) national ambitions. She is going to keep reaching out to such non-BJP regional forces to put together a pan-India front," the MP said.
When contacted, Trinamul secretary-general Partha Chatterjee declined comment on the matter.
However, Varun Patel, the spokesperson for Hardik Patel in Gujarat, said Akhilesh was "a nobody" and Trinamul should get in touch with the "original" camp and not "opportunists".
