By Andalib Akhter
Opposition parties which met in Patna today made limited strategy to oust Narendra Modi Government at centre. The final plan will be finalised at next meeting to be held in Shimla next month.
The meeting hosted by Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav here was to explore the possibility of a united front to challenge the ruling BJP in next year’s general election.
Around 32 political leaders from 17 parties in attended including Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi,Trinamool Congress Chief and Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav, Aam Aadmi Party Chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Former Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Chief and Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin.
Addressing a joint press conference after an almost four-hour-long meeting, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar said the leaders will meet in the next few days to give final shape to their plan of fighting together.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced that the next opposition meeting will be held in Shimla in Himachal Pradesh next month. “We have decided to prepare a common agenda and will take decisions in the next meeting on how to move forward,” he said.
West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centre after she attended the Opposition’s meeting hosted by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in Patna on Friday. She said, “If the BJP wins in the next election, India will exist no more, and there will be no more elections.”
Banerjee emphasised unity among the opposition, saying, “We are united and will fight together… The history started from here, and BJP wants to change that history. Our objective is to speak against this fascist government.”
She also emphasised that all these parties collectively cannot be labelled as the “opposition”, stating, “We are citizens of this country too. We are disciplined, patriotic, and we also say ‘Bharat Mata’.”
Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal-United leader, Nitish Kumar, expressed his satisfaction with the meeting, stating that the opposition parties have decided to contest the elections together. He added that another meeting will be scheduled in the near future.
Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK supremo MK Stalin were absent from the joint press conference, though Kumar, who was the host of the big Opposition meeting of 17 parties, claimed they left because they had to catch flights.
According to sources, sharp exchanges between AAP and the Congress were witnessed during the meeting, where the former made it clear that it would be “very difficult” for it to be part of an alliance until the grand old party denounced the Centre’s ordinance in Delhi.
After attending the meeting, AAP slammed the Congress, questioning its “silence” on the Centre’s Delhi ordinance. It said the Congress is yet to make its stand clear on the issue. While AAP leaders Arvind Kejriwal, Bhagwant Mann and Raghav Chadha attended the Opposition’s meeting to devise a strategy for the Lok Sabha 2024 polls, the party in a statement issued later said the Congress during the “like-minded” parties’ meeting refused to publicly “denounce the Black Ordinance” despite many leaders urging it to do so.