Amid chances of boycott, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee will attend the meeting of the UPA coordination committee Aug 22, party leader and Railway Minister Mukul Roy said on Saturday.
Interacting with the media after an 80-minute meeting between Banerjee and Defence Minister A.K. Antony at the state secretariat, Writers’ Buildings, Roy said: “Yes, she will attend the meeting.”
Antony, who is now the official number two in the centre’s ruling UPA dispensation, called on Banerjee as an emissary of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and requested her to attend the coordination panel meeting.
The two leaders are also understood to have discussed FDI in retail, forward trading and an economic package for the debt-ridden state, secretariat sources said.
The meeting comes three days after the prime minister, in his Independence Day address, said inability to create an environment within the country for rapid economic growth was due to “a lack of political consensus on many issues”.
“Time has now come to view the issues which affect our development processes as matters of national security,” he had added.