Kejriwal congratulates Mamata on TMC's big win

NEW DELHI: New opposition allies West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee and Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal spoke over phone on Wednesday, a day after TMC swept the municipal elections across the state.

As Banerjee's emissary, TMC MP Derek O'Brien had half an hour meeting over tea, with the Delhi CM at his office here on Wednesday evening and Banerjee who is on a district-wise tour of her state spoke to Kejriwal from O'Brien's phone for about five minutes.

In the brief interaction with Banerjee, Kejriwal congratulated her for TMC's big victory and discussed coordination with TMC in Parliament, as part of the united Opposition group that has been taking on government over various bills and issues. The 46-member TMC contingent in Parliament has been playing crucial role in the opposition benches in the last few sessions.

Kejriwal has been keen to meet Banerjee for a while and in March it was decided that he would be in touch with her. On Wednesday he is learnt to have told Banerjee that the next time she is in the Capital, the Delhi CM would be meeting her.

Interestingly, during his interaction with O'Brien, Kejriwal is learnt to have mentioned that Delhi Police being under the Union home ministry is a problem for the new chief minister. Since O'Brien and TMC Lok Sabha MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar are members of the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, it could help if the TMC members sided with the concerns of the Delhi government in matters to do with the Delhi Police.

In fact, with a host of bills including the land Bill that both parties are opposed to, slated to come up in Parliament next week, the TMC-AAP alignment could be more visible than it was earlier, in the opposition moves.

TMC and AAP are new allies who have converged on various issues in Parliament, especially on the land acquisition bill where the opposition parties took on the Narendra Modi government and walked in protest from Parliament to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

While Banerjee's interest seems to be in aligning with anti-BJP forces, Kejriwal hopes to gain from the TMC chief's long political experience.

In fact, Banerjee had decided against continuing with her efforts to have TMC presence in Delhi after Kejriwal's success here. Instead, she had announced her party's support to AAP during the Delhi elections.

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