Sharad Pawar says, next opposition meet in Bengaluru, not Shimla

Sharad Pawar, the leader of the Nationalist Congress Party, announced on Thursday that the next opposition gathering will take place in Bengaluru on July 13 and 14. After the meeting in Patna, he claimed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had grown restless.

 

Pawar was referring to the gathering of opposition party leaders that took place in the Bihar capital on June 23. At the Patna meeting, 17 parties, including the Congress, decided to work cooperatively by putting aside their differences in order to confront the BJP at the centre of the country in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

 

To develop a shared plan, they chose Shimla as the location for their second meeting. On July 13 and 14, they have chosen to convene in Bengaluru instead.

 

The next gathering of opposition parties, according to Pawar, will take place in Bengaluru on July 13 and 14. The second meeting, which will be presided over by Mallikarjun Kharge, the head of the Congress, is anticipated to produce a plan of action.

 

The first meeting was hosted by Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, at his home in Patna, and more than 32 representatives from different parties were present. RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary missed the meeting because of a ‘predetermined family programme,’ although Mayawati (BSP), Naveen Patnaik (BJD), K Chandrashekar Rao (BRS), and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy (YSRCP) were not invited.

 

The precise number of parties that vowed to oppose the BJP together was unclear; some leaders, like Nitish Kumar and Mamata Benerjee of the TMC, said there were 17, while others, like Yechury, claimed there were just 15.

 

The opposition meeting drew a harsh response from the BJP, which referred to it as a ‘multi-headed selfish alliance’ and likened it to wolves that hunt in packs.

 

Less than 200 of the 543 seats in the present Lok Sabha are filled by the combined power of these parties, but their leaders are optimistic that by working together, they can defeat the BJP, which has a massive majority with a total of more than 300.

 

The Congress, which is the BJP’s main opponent, gained 52 seats in 2019, which was a minor increase above their record-low 44 seat performance in 2014.