‘Trinamool leaders, not Mamata, to attend Akhilesh, Badal’s swearing-in’

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will not attend the swearing in ceremonies of the new state governments in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, a Trinamool Congress leader said Sunday. However, party delegations will attend both the events.

“No, she will not,” party’s Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien told IANS, when asked whether Banerjee would be present at the twin programmes.

O’Brien said the Trinamool Congress supremo, who was keen to attend both the swearing in ceremonies – of Parkash Singh Badal in Chandigarh March 14 and Samajawadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow March 15 – decided to give the events a miss due to “commitments in Bengal”.

The fifth anniversary of the police firing in East Midnapore district’s Nandigram falls on March 14. The Nandigram incident led to the intelligentsia and the peasants rallying around her, and her popularity kept soaring, ultimately leading to Trinamool’s victory in the state assembly polls last year.

On March 15, Governor M.K. Narayanan is slated to give his deliver his opening address at the budget session of the assembly here.

Banerjee has decided to depute state Tourism Minister Rachpal Singh to Punjab.

“Along with me, party MP K.D. Singh will also go to Chandigarh,” Rachpal told IANS.

Union Minister of State for Tourism Sultan Ahmed will attend Akhilesh’s swearing-in at Lucknow, Trinamool sources confirmed.

Banerjee was invited by Shiromani Akali Dal leader Badal to attend his oath-taking ceremony, while Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav extended an invitation to her to attend the swearing-in of his son as Uttar Pradesh chief minister the next day.

The twin invitations to Banerjee had triggered lot of debate as to whether the development could be a precursor to the formation of a non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) grouping of chief ministers heading regional parties.

With SAD being a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, and the two parties partners in the Punjab government, the invitations had kept political analysts busy on he pros and cons of Banerjee attending the event, as her party is the second largest ally in the centre’s ruling dispensation United Progressive Alliance.