Bengaluru: Leaders from 26 different political parties have come together to discuss how they might work together to defeat the BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
Dinner discussions were held to finalise the agenda for the formal talks beginning Tuesday morning, and they included Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee, who were seated next to each other; Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge; Rahul Gandhi; chief ministers M K Stalin, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal, and Hemant Soren; and RJD chief Lalu Prasad.
According to our sources, NCP chief Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule will be the only invited leaders who do not attend the meeting at the Taj West End Hotel on Tuesday.
"It was a good meeting," Mamata Banerjee stated afterward.
The motto "United We Stand" was displayed on billboards all around Bengaluru alongside photographs of opposition leaders, and the leaders sat in front of a massive banner bearing the slogan.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav (RJD), Akhilesh Yadav (SP), Farooq Abdullah (NC), and Mehbooba Mufti (PDP), as well as Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), D Raja (CPI), and Jayant Chaudhary (RLD) attended the meeting hosted by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. All the leaders were greeted with open arms when they arrived for the two-day brainstorming session.
A unified opposition, according to the Congress, would be "a game changer" for India's political landscape.
It was critical of the BJP, claiming that its members, who "used to talk of defeating the opposition parties alone," are now trying to revive the "ghost" that is the National Democratic Alliance.
Despite the BJP's attempts to divide the opposition, Congress president Kharge promised that they will fight together.
On the same day that the NDA is holding its conference in Delhi, where new allies are expected to join the ruling BJP-led coalition, the Opposition is holding its own meeting.
No matter how much the opposition parties talk about working together, reconciling their political interests would be difficult because of the disparities between them, especially between those who have been longtime adversaries.
Sitaram Yechury, leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), arrived at the Opposition gathering and declared that the CPI(M) will not form an alliance with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. He also claimed that the secular parties, including the Left and the Congress, would take on the BJP and the TMC in the state.
Yechury clarified that the goal is to unite the opposition's vote, and that a strategy for doing so will be developed.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been criticising these parties for their disagreements, referred to Monday's gathering as a "meeting of opportunists and power-hungry" leaders and claimed that such an alliance would be detrimental to India's future.
However, KC Venugopal, the general secretary of the Congress party's organisational branch, said that the opposition's 26 parties are here to work together to solve people's problems and address their worries about the "dictatorial government's actions."
On June 23, Bihar's Chief Minister Nitish Kumar sponsored a meeting for opposition unity in Patna. Fifteen parties were there, including the Congress, TMC, AAP, CPI, CPI-M, RJD, JMM, NCP, Shiv Sena (UBT), SP, and JDU.
The Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) of Krishna Patel and the Tamil Nadu Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK) led by M H Jawahirullah would be joined by the MDMK, KDMK, VCK, RSP, CPI-ML, Forward Bloc, IUML, Kerala Congress (Joseph), and Kerala Congress (Mani).
There are approximately 150 members of the Lok Sabha from opposition parties at this gathering.
When asked who was "clearly setting the narrative" at the Bengaluru meeting, TMC leader Derek O'Brien stated the other political parties, not the BJP.
He stated that among the NDA's allies, eight do not have any members of parliament, nine have one, and three have two.
Kharge poked fun at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking why Modi felt the need to get 30 parties together when he had previously asserted that he alone is enough to take on the Opposition.
A new lease on life is being given to the NDA, "which had become a ghost," according to Jairam Ramesh, general secretary of the Congress.
Venugopal argued that the opposition parties work together because they share a commitment to safeguarding democracy, constitutional rights, and the autonomy of the country's institutions.
He added that the opposition parties will plan their tactics for the upcoming Parliament session on July 20.
Venugopal predicted that the summit would have a profound impact on India's political landscape.
When asked who will be leading the alliance, Venugopal responded, "We have enough leaders, who have proved their mettle in various capacities." You shouldn't be concerned with the leader, but rather the state of the country. Yechury, leader of the CPI(M), has commented on his party's disagreements with the TMC by saying that the situation varies from state to state.
The goal is to minimise voter apathy and split ballots that benefit the BJP in these close races. Nothing novel here. In 2004, the Left held 61 seats in parliament; we defeated the Congress candidates and won 57 of those seats, ushering in the 10-year reign of the Manmohan Singh government.
It's not going to be Mata and the CPI(M). The CPI(M) general secretary has stated that the Left and the Congress will not be alone in their fight against the TMC and BJP in West Bengal, and that other secular parties will join in as well.
Yechury was alluding to the paradigm that enabled the Left-Congress combination to take control of the Central Government in 2004.
The opposition gathering is taking place against the backdrop of recent events, including the schism in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Sharad Pawar and the violence-tainted panchayat elections in West Bengal.—Inputs from Agencies
