Main Agenda of Friday’s Opposition Meeting is to Defeat BJP in 2024 Elections

Patna: The main agenda of top Opposition leaders, who will be meeting in Patna on June 23, is to come up with a concrete formula to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi in the next Lok Sabha elections. 

This may sound simple, but it will be difficult for the Opposition leaders, who will be engaged in a face-to-face deliberation and discussion together for the first time on how to defeat the BJP. The head of Janata Dal-United and the host of the Opposition meeting is Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

A day before the much-awaited Opposition meeting, senior leaders of JD-U and Congress admitted that the agenda was solely to formulate a plan to oust BJP. "There is a clear-cut agenda to strengthen united Opposition, chalk out our strategies and common minimum programme, and to put a joint opposition candidate against BJP and its allies to defeat them in the next elections," a JD-U leader close to Nitish Kumar, told NewsClick.

The JD-U leader made it clear that the prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition is unlikely to be decided at the meeting. "This meeting is a starting point, and nothing big is expected, but a united opposition will be a reality after it," he said.

Earlier, another senior JD-U leader K C Tyagi, an old confidant of Kumar, said the meeting was significant because a united Opposition is taking shape.

He further revealed that the Opposition meeting would discuss many issues, including the plan of a direct fight between the Opposition and BJP on the one-against-one formula.

Similarly, a Congress leader, who is considered close to the top party leadership in Delhi, told NewsClick that after this meeting, several rounds of the meeting would follow to finalise details of strategies and plan to defeat BJP.

A Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader said "Our leader and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav rightly pointed out that issues are important, not a particular person or leader. The meeting is a sign that there will be a change."

Meanwhile, less than 15 hours before the meeting, some colourful posters put up in Patna projected AAP convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as the future PM of India. But local AAP leaders denied that they had pasted the posters and blamed their rivals for creating trouble.

However, Kejriwal is reportedly keen on a discussion on the Centre's ordinance on the control of administrative services in the national capital. But sources in the ruling Mahagathbandhan said the agenda of the meeting is to discuss issues related to ensuring the defeat of BJP.

Hundreds of colourful posters, banners, and hoardings of Opposition leaders have come up in Patna from the airport to Gandhi Maidan to show the upbeat mood in the Opposition camp.

According to sources in the state government, People’s Democratic Party leader and former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was the first Opposition leader to have arrived in Patna on Thursday. After her, nearly a dozen of Opposition leaders, including Tamil Nadu CM Stalin, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, Shiv Sena (Udhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Uddhav Thackeray, CPI(M)general secretary Sitaram Yechuri, CPI leader D Raja, and CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya are likely to reach on Thursday. The others will arrive on June 23 morning, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, and Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar.

The Opposition meeting is a result of the active role played by  Kumar, who has been tirelessly engaging with national and regional party leaders to strengthen Opposition unity for the past few months. Kumar has repeatedly said that he is uninterested in any post and categorically denied that he was in the race for the PM post.

Leaders of the BJP, which is the Opposition party in Bihar, and its allies have launched a direct attack against the meeting. They claimed that the meeting would be unsuccessful in its objective of uniting the Opposition to defeat Modi.