No regional party shares good terms with Congress, Mamta

West Bengal chief minister and TMC supremo Mamta Banerjee has said that no regional party shares good terms with Congress. The Congress party will go its way, we will go our way. Talking to newsmen in Kolkata on Monday Ms Banerjee said she had asked the Congress and the Left to come together with other opposition parties against the BJP but they "did not listen". The Congress and the Left are bitter rivals of the Trinamool in Bengal, which has stymied attempts to collaborate at the national level.

Referring to her phone calls to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin and Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao or KCR, Ms Banerjee said: "The country's federal structure has been bulldozed...the country's Constitution is being demolished. We all need to come together to protect it." She added: "Together, we are trying to protect the federal structure. All regional parties must come to an understanding." On Sunday, the Bengal Chief Minister pinged her Tamil Nadu and Telangana counterparts and discussed a meeting of opposition Chief Ministers to "protect" the country's federal structure. She made it clear that the Congress is not invited.

Ms Banerjee also spoke about her party's ties with the Samajwadi Party and her visit to UP to campaign for Akhilesh Yadav. She said she would again visit UP on March 3 to campaign for the Samajwadi Party in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi. "The country can be saved only if UP is protected (against the BJP). If we want to defeat Narendra Modi in 2024, big states like UP and Bengal will matter the most," she said.