Overview
- Former PM adviser Sanjaya Baru argued in The Telegraph that India should have a “second woman prime minister” and said Mamata Banerjee best fits the role.
- TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose endorsed the idea by sharing Baru’s article on X and calling it “an idea whose time has come.”
- Baru said Banerjee is the only woman currently heading both a political party and a government and wrote that the Rahul Gandhi–Mallikarjun Kharge model has “not helped.”
- On the same day, Mani Shankar Aiyar proposed DMK chief M.K. Stalin as the best person to consolidate the INDIA bloc, offering a competing plan.
- Congress has issued no official response and no formal INDIA bloc decision has been made, with the discussion intensifying ahead of West Bengal’s March–April polls.