Top leaders of Opposition parties are meeting today to chalk out a roadmap for the formation of an anti-BJP front for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee said that they will fight together like a family to take on the NDA one to one while meeting the top opposition leaders.
According to sources, the opposition parties plan to postpone the controversial leadership debate for the time being and focus instead on finding common ground. 15 party leaders, including six chief ministers, are anticipated to attend the discussions.
Sources from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) claimed that the party would leave the meeting if the Congress did not commit to opposing the Center’s ordinance on the control of administrative services in Delhi, exposing rifts in the opposition ranks a day before the crucial discussions.
Apart from Mayawati, the leader of the BSP, not being invited, and Jayant Chaudhary, the leader of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, planning to skip the meeting because of a family event, the Samajwadi Party would be the only party from Uttar Pradesh to attend the summit.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (TMC), Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann (AAP), Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin (DMK), Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren (JMM), Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav.
Maharashtra’s former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray (Shiv Sena-UBT), and NCP president Sharad Pawar are among the leaders anticipated to attend the first high-level opposition meeting.
Nitish Kumar (JDU), the chief minister of Bihar, and Tejashwi Yadav (RJD), his deputy, are hosting at the chief minister’s 1, Aney Marg residence.
The gathering is also anticipated to include PDP, CPI(M), CPI, CPI(ML), and National Conference leaders.
On Thursday night, Kejriwal and Mann also flew into Patna and went to the Patna Sahib gurudwara.
On Thursday, Tamil Nadu CM Stalin also arrived, CPI leader D Raja, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, and PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti.
Sources claim that the event was seen as a platform for the Opposition to come together and confront the Narendra Modi-led BJP government. They asserted that as a result, the core structure and strategy for Opposition unity would probably be discussed, with the challenging issues of seat-sharing and the leadership conundrum being temporarily avoided.
The Manipur agitation and the Center’s alleged failure there are likely to come up in this context. According to the leader, the main item on the agenda will be issues that the Opposition would bring up together to put the BJP in the corner.
To check if the AAP’s demand that the Center’s ordinance on the control of administrative services in the national capital be a prominent topic of discussion is realised, the meeting’s agenda will be closely scrutinised.
Tensions between the Congress and TMC are present at the meeting as well. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, organised a dharna outside a block office in Bengal’s Murshidabad district to call for punishment against Trinamool Congress volunteers who are accused of attacking Congress workers in the run-up to the state’s panchayat elections.
The Opposition’s internal conflicts and the question of who will represent them as prime minister have been frequently made fun of by the BJP.
In response to the BJP’s criticism, Akhilesh Prasad Singh, the head of the Bihar Congress, stated that the issue at hand was who would represent the opposition alliance as prime minister.
When the opposition parties get together and run in the national elections the next year, Singh projected that the BJP will lose more than 100 seats.
The basic goal of the secular democratic parties, according to Raja, must be to defeat the BJP.
The conference takes place while the ruling coalition in Patna is also in turmoil, with former Bihar chief minister and Mahagathbandhan ally Jitan Ram Manjhi defecting to the NDA.
According to K C Tyagi, head of the JD(U), “We have invited those parties that are willing to fight against the BJP in 2024 and want to be a part of an anti-BJP front.” There is no chance that Mayawati, Naveen Patnaik, K Chandrashekar Rao, or YS Jagan Mohan Reddy will boycott the meeting, he informed the sources.
