KOLKATA: Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to visit Kolkata on December 17  for attending the Eastern Zonal Council meeting.

Sources in the Nabanna secretariat in West Bengal said, the Eastern Zonal Council Meeting was originally scheduled for November 5 but was postponed because of the Union Home Minister's other commitments. Despite the fact that the state secretariat has not yet received official confirmation on this point, sources claim that the office of the Union Home Minister has chosen December 17 as the meeting's preliminary date.

A state government official said, the meeting would take place in the auditorium next to the Nabanna state secretariat. Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, Nitish Kumar of Bihar, Hemant Soren of Jharkhand, Naveen Patnaik of Odisha, and Prem Singh Tamang of Sikkim are all expected to attend the meeting in addition to Banerjee.

Political observers believe that the meeting, and particularly the Union Home Minister's trip to the state to attend it, will be significant on a number of fronts. It remains to be seen if Amit Shah and Mamata Banerjee will have a separate one-on-one meeting in addition to the Eastern Zonal Council meeting.

State secretariat sources mentioned that nothing has so far been confirmed about this. Political observes think that if the meeting takes place, it will be extremely important before the state's upcoming three-tier panchayat elections, which are scheduled for next year and over which the tension between the Trinamool Congress, the state's current government, and the BJP, the opposition, is already at its highest.

It is also to be seen that besides his official schedule, Shah meets the state BJP leaders or attends any party function in the state and all eyes will be focused on what message the Union home minister conveys to his party leaders.  Finally, with Nitish Kumar emerging as a significant opposition figure ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, everyone will be watching to see if a separate meeting between the two will take place.

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