Swamy, Modi... what’s Didi up to?

West Bengal CM raises row over BSF jurisdiction with PM and targeted Tripura killings of Trinamool workers

By Ajay Jha | NT

New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday on a threeday official visit, raised the contentious issues on the BSF’s territorial jurisdiction in WB that she demanded be withdrawn but also the calculated violence in Tripura in which Trinamool Congress workers were allegedly assaulted by BJP workers. However, she set tongues wagging on her growing national profile, after she met with Subramaniam Swamy, a known critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Triggering fresh speculation over her future plans as she positions herself as a rival to the prime minister in the 2024 parliamentary election, the Bengal powerhouse upped the ante by offering to ally with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party to defeat the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, on the day that the BJP leadership, in a bid to win back the alienated farmers’ vote in Western U.P., scrapped three farm laws on Wednesday.