West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said she will contest the 2024 general elections from Uttar Pradesh.
India Today journalist Shiv Aroor shared the update on his Twitter timeline. Banerjee said that all the regional parties should unite and fight to defeat the BJP. By this fresh statement, Banerjee has again tried to position herself as the Prime Ministerial candidate for 2024 elections, thereby snubbing the Congress yet again.
She had been projecting herself as the national leader soon after the 2021 West Bengal state assembly elections. Mamata has made it quite clear that she should be the leader of choice for the opposition since other leaders like Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar of NCP cannot win state elections on their own. Even the other regional parties like RJD and Samajwadi Party have been struggling.
National Party that Congress is has been reduced to a joke and is fighting for survival anyway. And while Congress leaders may think that Rahul Gandhi is the brightest star in the universe, Mamata Banerjee does not seem to be taking it lying down. Her stating that she will fight 2024 elections from UP is just one more jibe to the Congress considering Rahul Gandhi lost the Amethi seat to Smriti Irani in 2019.
Earlier in the day she was reelected as the chairperson of her party TMC unopposed.
In the 2021 West Bengal state assembly elections, Banerjee had lost Nandigram seat to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, who had left the TMC and joined the BJP earlier. He was one of the closest confidantes of Banerjee. Earlier this week, Banerjee threw a tantrum and blocked West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankar on Twitter claiming every day he was ‘tweeting and attacking us’. “As if he is the only supreme and we are bonded labourers. I cannot take it. I have blocked him today on Twitter,” she had said.