Kolkota : US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the state secretariat here, with FDI in retail, the Teesta water treaty and American investment in the state expected to figure in their talks.

Dressed in her customary trouser suit, Clinton reached the Writers’ Buildings – the seat of power in the state – around 11.10 a.m. and greeted Banerjee with a gesture of ‘namaste’.

The two posed for a photo op in the corridor of the first floor of the secretariat, with a smiling Banerjee seemingly explaining to her guest the history of the building and the sprucing up done to welcome her.

Clinton also stood for a while before a portrait of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore that has replaced an old one of the bard of Bengal.

Earlier in the morning, she had said during an interaction at the La Martiniere school for girls that she that she “discovered Tagore in college” and had been a fan ever since.

The meeting with Mamata, the first such exercise by any US secretary of state, is considered important as the Trinamool chief had effectively stalled the UPA government’s efforts last year to bring in FDI in retail.

Ahead of her meeting with Banerjee, Hillary Clinton said she wanted to know West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s “vision of the future”.

“I want to know from the chief minister of West Bengal her vision of the future… I come with a belief that India can compete with anybody, anywhere,” she said at a gathering at the La Martiniere school for girls here.

Clinton said, “I know how difficult it is for women to be elected anywhere. When I meet a woman who has broken through those barriers, we share a common bond of having gone through the fire of electoral politics.”

On her being thought of as formidable, Clinton said: “I don’t think of myself as that but others do…it can be an advantage sometimes or a disadvantage.”

Clinton, who came to Kolkata from Dhaka on Sunday, said in 2011, 35 percent of all L1 work visas in the US had been issued to Indians. Addressing a gathering at the La Martiniere school here, she said more than 100,000 Indian students were studying in the US.

Clinton, who arrived here Sunday on the first leg of her two-day India visit, will be in New Delhi later Monday. She will reach New Delhi after meeting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

This is Hillary’s second visit to the city. Earlier, she visited Kolkata as the US First Lady to attend the funeral of Mother Teresa in September 1997.