Both Trinamool Congress and SP have not been keen on sharing space with the grand old party.
Kolkata:
On a mission to bring together opposition parties who have no love lost for Congress, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today reached the West Bengal state secretariat in Kolkata to meet Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in his push to forge a grand alliance against the BJP. His deputy, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, also accompanied him on the brief visit. They are later scheduled to fly to Lucknow to meet Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. Both Trinamool Congress and SP have not been keen on sharing space with the grand old party.
Akhilesh Yadav has made it clear that he has no interest in a front that includes the Congress — attending a few meetings with like-minded opposition parties, including Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. He had not pulled punches either after crashing in the 2017 polls, which he contested in alliance with the Congress.
Mamata Banerjee hasn’t held back from attacking Congress either, especially since the party snatched an assembly seat from her party in the recent by-elections in the state.
Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification as a Lok Sabha MP recently precipitated a rare show of unity across Opposition parties, after which efforts to unite against the BJP picked pace with the meeting between Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, and Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav. Nitish Kumar has also met with Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party boss Arvind Kejriwal, one of the harshest critics of Congress, who conceded that it was “extremely necessary” that the entire opposition and the country came together and change the government at the Centre.
Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU) has proposed what they call the “Nitish formula” of opposition unity, sources say.
“The only way to win against Narendra Modi is to follow a one-against-one policy in 2024, which means one seat, one candidate from the opposition against the BJP candidate,” said senior Janata Dal-United leader KC Tyagi.
The one-against-one formula to prevent a split in the opposition vote, which worked in 1977 and 1989, is being seen as a potent weapon against the BJP and PM Modi’s election juggernaut, though there’s not much confidence that the rival opposition parties can agree on a truce.
