Guwahati: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee offered prayers at the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati on Tuesday during a brief visit to the city.
Banerjee arrived here in the afternoon, on the day her party Trinamool Congress swept the Kolkata civic polls, and drove straight to the temple atop the Nilachal Hills where she was received by the temple’s ‘dolois’ or priests.
She did puja inside the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, where the stone symbolising Kamakhya Devi is placed and later also prayed at the Bagalamukhi temple, further up the hills, a party member said.
She also had the ‘prasad’ offered to her by the temple authorities before leaving for the airport from where she took a flight back to Kolkata.
Banerjee was received at the airport by TMC’s Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev.
The firebrand leader did not talk to the press waiting outside the temple and the airport, but waved at them.
A senior TMC leader said that Banerjee had asked them to explain to the press that she was on a private visit as she wanted to pay her obeisance to ‘Ma Kamakhya’.
Speculations were rife that Banerjee would also visit Meghalaya but the party member pointed out that she made it clear that there will be no political talks or programmes during Christmas in the hill state.
Banerjee had also visited the temple in August 2013.