New Delhi
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday met UPA chief Sonia Gandhi and batted for a collective leadership of the Opposition in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

“I am not after any chair. The first task is to defeat the BJP,” she said after meeting Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi with whom she discussed a range of issues to build broader anti-BJP coalitions. Answering questions on whether the Congress was open to her candidature as the PM face of the anti-BJP front for the next polls, she also said it (PM face) would be decided later.

Banerjee and Gandhis are learnt to have discussed the National Register of Citizens in Assam, mob lynchings and “dilution” of institutions of democracy, including concerns around the credibility of EVMs. The Bengal CM said she was for a collective leadership of the Opposition and the most dominant party playing the principal role in each state in the next General Election.

Asked if the Congress was open to allying with the TMC in Bengal, Banerjee said, “It is for the Congress to decide. We cannot interfere in its decision making, but we are in favour of the strongest party to take on the BJP in every state.”

The Congress is in a dilemma about its alliance in Bengal where it had an understanding with the Left in the last state elections. Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Choudhry is a vociferous Banerjee baiter and recently accused her party of “murdering democracy” in the panchayat polls.

But with the Congress Working Committee authorising Rahul to forge pacts, the elbow room for state leaders to influence alliance formations stands limited. An equally strong faction in the Bengal Congress favours aligning with the TMC and has threatened to join TMC ranks should Rahul not oblige.

Besides, she came to Parliament and met Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ahmed Patel and Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav. She also met BJP patriarch LK Advani.