West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will not attend the swearing-in ceremony of Congress leader Kamal Nath as Madhya Pradesh CM, official sources said. Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi will be representing the party at the event.
There was, however, no reason cited for Mamata Banerjee not going to Bhopal for Kamal Nath’s swearing-in ceremony on Monday, an official of the Chief Minister’s Office said.(AFP/File Photo)
West Bengal chief minister Mamata
Banerjee will not attend the swearing-in ceremony of Congress
leader Kamal Nath as Madhya Pradesh CM, official sources said
on Sunday. There was, however, no reason cited for Banerjee not going to Bhopal
for the swearing-in ceremony on Monday, an official of the Chief Minister’s
Office said.
Trinamool
Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi will be representing the party at the event, which
the Congress intends to showcase as a picture of Opposition unity. “I have been
directed by the party chief (Banerjee) to be present at Monday’s swearing-in
programme,” Trivedi told PTI.
Asked whether he
was carrying any message for the function, Trivedi said, “There is no message
as such. My going there is a message itself.”
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The Congress has
invited leaders from across the political spectrum. Apart from party chief
Rahul Gandhi and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi,
Banerjee, Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo
Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav were invited.
Banerjee, who
had earlier floated the idea of a federal front of regional parties, has been
seen recently exchanging bonhomie with Naidu, and her counterparts from Delhi
and Telangana, Arvind Kejriwal and Chandrashekar Rao respectively, apart from
DMK president MK Stalin. But the same warmth has not been seen for the
Congress.
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elections, click here
Nath, a
nine-time parliamentarian from Chhindwara and currently president of the
Madhya Pradesh Congress, will become the first chief minister of a Congress
government in the central Indian state after 15 years. Digvijaya Singh was the
last Congress chief minister of the state.
The BJP had
snatched power from the Grand Old Party in 2003 and went on to retain it till
its narrow defeat in the recently-held Assembly election. The Congress won 114
seats in the 230-member House and has secured the support of a total 121 MLAs.
(The story has been published from a
wire feed without any modifications to the text. Only the headline has been
changed.)
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