Unfazed by exit poll results predicting the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to return to power in parliamentary elections, Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu, who is looking to stitch a non-BJP coalition at the Centre, on Monday met Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president will meet Banerjee as part of his efforts to unite opposition parties against the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha election results on May 23.
During his meeting with Mamata, Naidu is expected to brief her about his meetings with all political leaders in New Delhi and Lucknow in the last few days, a source said.
Naidu had a busy Sunday as he met Congress President Rahul Gandhi, his mother Sonia, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
On Saturday, Naidu had met both Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati in Lucknow separately to discuss possibility of non-BJP parties coming together in the event of a fractured verdict. On return to New Delhi, he had met Rahul and other leaders of regional and opposition parties of his talks with Akhilesh and Mayawati.
In Lucknow on Monday, Mayawati met Akhilesh after exit polls indicated gains for their alliance in the electorally most important state of Uttar Pradesh. The closed-door talks between them lasted for almost an hour. Details of what transpired between the two top leaders was not known immediately.
Rejecting exit poll predictions, the Trinamool Congress party was on Monday busy with post-poll calculations based on reports received from its district units across West Bengal, a senior party leader said.
Dismissing the exit poll predictions, he said "we do not have to worry about these exit poll reports, which in most cases do not match. We have our internal party report. We also have reports from districts and each and every constituency."
The Trinamool leadership is also in talks with various opposition parties in the country, party sources said adding the party will play an important role," said another senior Trinamool leader who did not wish to be named.
In West Bengal, some of the exit polls suggested the TMC getting 24 seats, the BJP bagging 16, the Congress two and the Left Front drawing a blank.
Dubbing exit polls as "gossip", Mamata had said on Sunday that she did not trust such surveys as the "game plan" was to use them for "manipulation" of EVMs.
The West Bengal unit of the BJP was quick to hit back, asking Mamata to "stop living in denial" mode.
Although senior Trinamool leaders expressed confidence of winning the polls in West Bengal, some district leaders feel there had been an undercurrent against the party which the top leadership of the party had "failed" to gauge.
“We don’ t know whether these exit poll results will match with the actual results. But we can say this much that there has been an undercurrent against us this time. Now everything will be answered only on May 23, a Trinamool leader of West Midnapore district said.
