The possibility of a meeting between Union home minister Amit Shah and chief minister Mamata Banerjee next Saturday has been officially ruled out.

The Eastern Zonal Council meeting, scheduled to be held at Nabanna on November 5, has been deferred as Shah will not be able to attend the meeting on the date, sources said.

“The MHA (ministry of home affairs) has informed that the meeting has to be deferred as the Union home minister will not be available on November 5. A fresh date will be announced soon,” said a senior state government official.

The Eastern Zonal Council meeting is held to resolve common issues of eastern states Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Sikkim and Bengal. The Union home minister convenes the meeting after every three or four years. Issues related to coal mines, interstate borders, railways and national highways are usually discussed in the meeting.

This year, the meeting had drawn attention of both political and administrative circles as Shah and Mamata were to meet for the first time after the 2021 Assembly polls.

In the 2021 Assembly polls in Bengal, Shah had taken the lead role in the BJP’s electoral campaign.

After the defeat of the BJP, Trinamul repeatedly alleged that the BJP-led Centre was harassing Bengal’s ruling party leaders via central agencies like the CBI and the ED.

There was another possibility of a meeting between the duo at the Chintan Shivir organised by the Union home ministry at Surajkund in Haryana, where home ministers of all states were invited for a two-day session. But Mamata, Bengal’s home minister too, didn’t turn up.

“Trinamul feels that Shah is the mastermind behind using central agencies against Trinamul. In this backdrop, the Eastern Zonal Council meeting was gradually becoming an interesting event as it would have given the Bengal chief minister to raise the issue…. Now, it remains to be seen when the meeting is rescheduled,” said a source.