Kolkata, June 8 (IANS) Political circles in West Bengal were abuzz on Monday after former state minister and ex-Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim visited the Assembly chamber of Ritabrata Banerjee, leader of the breakaway bloc in the Trinamool Congress legislative party and the Leader of the Opposition, and held a meeting with him.

Hakim, a four-time Trinamool Congress legislator from 2011 to date, was seen going to the room allotted to Banerjee within the assembly premises along with another party legislator from the breakaway bloc, Sandipan Saha, and had a meeting with him.

However, Hakim, who had resigned from his chair as the Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation last week, on Monday, refused to answer media queries about the agenda of the meeting with Banerjee and Saha.

The development took place when former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress secretary, were in New Delhi to attend a meeting of the opposition INDIA Bloc convened by Congress’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge.

In the meantime, information surfaced that in New Delhi, a group of rebel Trinamool Congress MPs under four-time party Lok Sabha members, Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Satabdi Roy, an actress-turned-politician, had arrived at the official residence of Union Environment Minister, Bhupenddra Yadav.

When they turned up at Yadav’s residence, West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari was also present there. CM Adhikari is in New Delhi for signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the West Bengal Government and the Union Government for the implementation of Ayushman Bharat, the central health insurance scheme, in West Bengal.

It is learnt that 20 Trinamool Congress MPs from the two houses of the Parliament, along with Sukehndu Sekhar Roy, who resigned from the Rajya Sabha as well as from the primary membership of Trinamool Congress earlier on Monday, were present at the meeting at Yadav’s residence.

The main contention of the rebel MPs is that they are not willing to accept Abhishek Banerjee as the party’s general secretary.

–IANS

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