Mamata Banerjee checkmates Nitish Kumar ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, December 20: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee overshadowed her Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar at the Opposition meeting at Ashok Hotel in the national capital. Banerjee’s teaming up with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took the shine away from Kumar.
The Bihar chief minister is increasingly finding marginalized in the Opposition block – Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). He is seen to have been effectively cut to size after Kumar found no ally in the alliance barring Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal keeping company with him for the media glare.
The Bihar chief minister and the RJD patriarch had made a hasty retreat from the Mumbai meeting of the Opposition block in September. Both repeated the act in the Delhi meeting yesterday as they didn’t join the presser addressed by the leaders of the constituents of the INDIA.
The two Bihar leaders made their displeasure evident after Banerjee and Kejriwal teamed up to steer the Oppsoition block to pick up either a convenor or a prime ministerial face. They proposed the name of president of the Congress Mallikarjuna Kharge for the coveted role, accoding to sources. Kumar and Yadav found themselves in positions of a checkmate.
Kharge for the coveted role is not a new idea. This has been in circulation for a while. Former media advisor to Manmohan Singh as the prime minister had first publicly argued that Kharge makes for the best choice of the Oppsoition block as the prime ministerial face. His arguments essentially ticked Kharge as an Oppsoition shield that could not be an easy target for Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The realization that the Lok Sabha elections have taken the form of a presidential election is fast dawning in the Opposition camp. The 2014 and the 2019 general elections were made out as Modi versus Rahul Gandhi duels. Banerjee-led sections of the Opposition clearly want that the 2024 general elections shouldn’t again deliver a Modi versus Rahul poll plot. It also shows that a large sections of the Opposition constituents have reservations against former president of the Congress.
Kharge is a Dalit, and his appointment as president of the Congress had sent shock waves in the BJP unit in Karnataka ahead of the state Assembly elections. Kharge sought votes in Karnataka on his name. He called Modi a snake and remained unapologetic despite the prime minister playing the emotional card. He listens to all in the meetings of the Opposition leaders, and poses no threat to the aspirations of the likes of Banerjee and Kejriwal to play their innings in the national politics at some latter dates.
But the Bihar chief minister wasn’t sanguine for the Opposition block to let others once more dim him for a national role. Even while the RJD patriarch keeps company with him, Yadav is also wary that the Bihar chief minister could surprise him any day as done a number of times in the past and make his son Tejashwi Yadav sit in the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly. Yadav is widely credited to have said a number of times that “while other have teeth in their mouths, Nitish Kumar has them in his stomach”.
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