Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday welcomed a current and a former Congress politician and an ex-Janata Dal United leader into the Trinamul fold in an apparent effort to emerge as the principal challenger to the BJP, but in the process sent out the signal that she was competing with the Congress at the national level.

The trio who joined Trinamul in New Delhi were cricketer-turned-politician Kirti Azad who has political roots in Bihar, Ashok Tanwar, a Dalit leader from Haryana, and expelled JDU leader Pavan Verma, once known to be close to Bihar chief minister and BJP ally Nitish Kumar.

Barring Tanwar, a former Rahul Gandhi aide who quit the Congress ahead of the 2019 Haryana polls and floated his own party, the other two don’t have a mass following.

However, Mamata’s move to induct them into her party on the second day of her visit to New Delhi underlined her political intent of expanding Trinamul’s base outside Bengal, even at the cost of chipping away at the Opposition space held by the Congress.

The developments put a question mark on her possible meeting with Sonia Gandhi to iron out differences in the path of forging a larger Opposition unity to fight the BJP.

“Now the possibility of a Mamata-Sonia meeting appears ruled out. Didi will meet the Prime Minister tomorrow (Wednesday) and fly back to Calcutta the day after tomorrow,” a Trinamul leader said. Ahead of her arrival in Delhi on Monday, several Trinamul leaders had said that a meeting with the Congress president was on the cards.

Speaking to Tanwar’s supporters from Haryana in the evening, she thanked them for being part of the “biggest decision for the country and to defeat the BJP”.

With Tanwar by her side, Mamata promised to visit Haryana, a state ruled by a BJP-JJP alliance where the Congress is the principal Opposition.

“Tanwarji has taken a very important decision today for the country and to fight the BJP…. I will visit Haryana whenever Tanwarji calls me,” the Trinamul chief said.

She added that Tanwar would be sent to Goa, a poll-bound BJP-ruled state where Trinamul is trying to replace the Congress as the principal challenger.

Trinamul leaders privately spoke of Mamata emerging as the “new and real Congress” and said the Congress was incapable of fighting the BJP.

On Mamata’s national ambitions, they said she was only trying to fill the vacuum of a “credible Opposition” to the BJP. The Trinamul leaders rubbished allegations that such moves could jeopardise a wider Opposition unity and end up making the path easier for Narendra Modi and the BJP.

On Tuesday, Tanwar, Azad and Verma came one by one to the 184 South Avenue apartment of Mamata’s nephew and Trinamul MP Abhishek Banerjee to meet her and join her party.

Earlier in the day, Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former aide of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, and poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar, a former Rajya Sabha MP, called on Mamata.

The three leaders who joined Trinamul hailed Mamata as the leader who can challenge the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

“The entire country is feeling tortured by the BJP…. The circumstances have become such that the only leader capable of leading the country is Mamatadi,” Tanwar said. “Just like the farmers got together and defeated the arrogant government, the entire Opposition should get together and defeat the BJP,” he added.

Azad, who had been a Lok Sabha MP from the BJP twice before joining the Congress in 2019, said India needed a leader like Mamata who “can fight on the ground and give a new direction to the country”.

“The way Mamataji has successfully challenged Modi in a democratic way, many people like me would like to join her. She will be a deciding factor in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and she will play a national role,” Verma said, claiming that many more leaders committed to fight the BJP were set to join Trinamul.

The entry of the leaders on Tuesday and Trinamul’s determined forays into some BJP-ruled states where the Congress is the principal Opposition bear the imprint of Prashant Kishor, who was Trinamul’s consultant for the Assembly elections.

Verma, like Kishore, is a former JDU leader and they are known to share a cordial relationship. Both had earlier tried to project Nitish as a national alternative to Modi and now seem to be doing the same with Mamata after the Bihar chief minister stunned everyone by embracing the BJP again.