Emerging from their four-hour ice-breaking meeting in Patna on Friday evening, 32 leaders from 15 political parties kick-started their collaboration for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, resolving to unitedly fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a spirit of accommodating mutual interests.
A brief spat, which an Opposition leader dubbed a “misunderstanding” that lasted barely seven minutes, between Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, however, threatened to unsettle unity efforts. Kejriwal insisted the Congress join his party to publicly denounce the Centre’s ordinance on Delhi bureaucrats at the Patna meeting. He later skipped the joint press conference of the leaders and his party issued a stinging statement against the Congress.
At the meeting, the leaders said they would protest in one voice any vendetta of the Centre against their parties and meet again in Shimla in the second week of July to discuss the future course of action, including initiating a discussion on a common agenda.
Several leaders mooted strengthening the index of opposition unity, or IoU, sacrificing their claims on seats to ensure “one-versus-one” contests in the greater interest.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said he attended the meeting without “memory” of past likes or dislikes and prejudices. He said the Congress would do its utmost to sustain Opposition unity. Hinting that he could be open to seat sharing with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav said he hailed from the state that sent the most MPs to the Lok Sabha and would show large-heartedness in looking at alliances.
Yadav said all parties attending the meeting were like-minded in their inclination towards the Congress and were anti-BJP. In his reaction to the Opposition meeting in Patna, Union Home Minister Amit Shah dubbed it a “photo session”.