In an effort to bring all non-NDA parties together to defeat the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar met his chief minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday in Bhubaneswar.
"Ours is a known friendship and we were colleagues many years ago. No discussion was held on any alliances today. The land in Puri is being given free of cost to the Bihar govt to build a Bihar Bhawan there," said Naveen Patnaik with Bihar CM Nitish Kumar in Bhubaneswar, as quoted by ANI.
Due to the fact that Patnaik had a discussion with Mamata Banerjee, the TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister, in March, the meeting between Kumar and Patnaik assumed political significance.
Since a long time ago, there have been rumors that Kumar will meet with Biju Janata Dal leader Patnaik.
The Bihar CM, who snapped ties with the BJP last year, promising to overcome it in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, has visited many places and met political leaders of different hues as a part of his "opposition unity drive".
He spoke with Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav, the president of the Samajwadi Party, recently.
Kumar and his delegate Tejashwi Yadav had in April met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi within the sight of Rahul Gandhi and swore to take all resistance groups together for a unified front against the BJP.
The leader of the JD(U) met, among others, with the leader of the NCP, Sharad Pawar, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the CPI(M).
Kumar has maintained that he has "no prime ministerial ambitions," but that he is eager to play a "positive" role in uniting the opposition at the Centre against the NDA.
Patnaik, one of the longest serving CMs of any state in the nation, has attempted to stay equidistant from the Congress and the BJP.
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