Top leaders from 26 Opposition parties gathered in Bengaluru on the second day of the joint Opposition meeting to plan the contours of the front that would face BJP next year.
Rahul Gandhi stated in a Facebook post, “A United Opposition – To protect our Democracy, To Safeguard India’s Constitution”.
While the first day of the meeting was comprised of informal discussions followed by a dinner gathering, today will be comprised of formal deliberations. At the dinner meeting last night, all political parties were asked to offer names for the alliance, which would then be discussed and a consensus reached during the deliberations.
The parties are also expected to produce a unified declaration and form a committee to oversee the group’s operations.
According to the sources, Sonia Gandhi has been proposed as the new group’s chairperson.
Sonia Gandhi was the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 1 and 2, which governed from 2004 until 2014.
Leaders will also establish two sub-committees, one to finalize the shared minimum agenda and establish contact points, and the other to develop a joint opposition program of events, rallies, and conventions.
Top oppositions figures, including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Mallikarjun Kharge, as well as Chief ministers from West Bengal, Bihar, Tamil Naidu, Jharkhand, and formal Chief ministers from Uttar Pradesh and Maharastra, were in attendance.
Among the new parties are the MDMK, KDMK, VCK, RSP, CPI-ML, Forward Bloc, IUML, Kerala Congress (Joseph), and Kerala Congress (Mani), as well as Krishna Patel’s Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) and Tamil Nadu’s Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK) led by M H Jawahirullah.
The total number of opposition parties attending this meeting in Lok Sabha is estimated to be around 150.
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