JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy on Friday called on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at her residence in Kolkata and requested the TMC boss to campaign in the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls.

While discussing the present political situation in the country, the two leaders condemned the disqualification of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi from Lok Sabha in a disqualification case as a "political vendetta of the BJP", a JD(S) leader privy to the discussions said.

The former Karnataka chief minister arrived in the city earlier in the day and reached Banerjee's residence at around 4.50 PM.

TMC's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee was also present at the meeting.

“Mamata Banerjee has agreed to Kumaraswamy Ji's request to campaign in Karnataka. She has asked him to send her a schedule. Apart from this, both the leaders also discussed national politics and the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi. The leaders agreed that this disqualification is nothing but political vendetta of the BJP," the JD (S) leader told PTI.

According to sources in the TMC, the two leaders discussed the present political situation in the country and the way forward to fight and defeat BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha poll.

"Former CM of Karnataka and @JanataDal_S leader Shri @hd_kumaraswamy called upon Hon'ble CM Smt @MamataOfficial today, in Kalighat, Kolkata," the AITC tweeted.

He had attended the meeting of opposition parties convened by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the city in January 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha poll that year.

According to TMC leaders, meetings with non-BJP and non-Congress leaders are part of the party's efforts to cobble up an opposition unity with regional powers.

This is Banerjee's third meeting with a non-BJP, non-Congress leader within a week.

On Thursday, Banerjee met Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in Bhubaneswar. Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav called on her on March 17 in Kolkata.

On his arrival at the airport, Kumaraswamy dubbed the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as Lok Sabha MP as a "political vendetta of the BJP".

Gandhi was disqualified from Lok Sabha on Friday, a day after a Surat court convicted him in a 2019 criminal defamation case.

Announcing his disqualification, the Lok Sabha secretariat, in a notification, said that it was effective from March 23, the day of his conviction.

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