Both Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and Uttar Pradesh's backwards' leader Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi party on Friday said the two parties would stay away from both the Congress and BJP and indicated possible talks with other regional players ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Banerjee met Yadav here at her Kalighat residence for a meeting where the two powerful opposition leaders decided to fight the BJP together , even as the Congress, M.K Stalin-led DMK which rules Tamil Nadu, Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and Laloo Prasad's RJD as well as Leftist parties have come closer to forming a broad opposition front against the BJP. TMC also announced it would hold talks with other regional parties in their bid to take on the BJP in the crucial 2024 elections but at the same time denied that it was planning a third front, separate from the Congress-led front. The first off, the mark in announcing an equidistance from the BJP which rules at the Centre and the Congress which has been