• Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today met his Odisha counterpart and Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik in Bhubaneswar, according to NDTV

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is set to meet his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik here on Tuesday, as part of his efforts to bring all non-NDA parties together to defeat the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The two chief ministers will hold the meeting at 'Naveen Niwas' here around noon, sources in the Chief Minister’s Office said.

The meeting between Kumar and Patnaik assumed political significance as the latter had held a discussion with West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee in March.

Speculations about Kumar’s meeting with Patnaik, who heads the Biju Janata Dal, have been doing the rounds for quite some time.

The Bihar CM, who snapped ties with the BJP last year, vowing to defeat it in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, has toured many places and met political leaders of various hues as part of his “opposition unity drive”.

Recently, he held talks with Banerjee and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav.

Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav had in April met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi in the presence of Rahul Gandhi and pledged to take all opposition parties together for a united front against the BJP.

The JD(U) leader, also held meetings with NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury among others.

Kumar has been maintaining that he had “no prime ministerial ambitions” but said he was looking forward to play a “positive” role in forging opposition unity against the ruling NDA at the Centre.

Patnaik, one of the longest serving CMs of any state in the country, has tried to remain equidistant from the Congress and the BJP.

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