Opposition to eat out of Kharge hands; Congress grabs unity pivot
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, July 17: Congress president Mallikarjuna Kharge will host the Opposition leaders for dinner tonight in Bengaluru amid the city sporting banners and posters of the political functionaries of the parties. As many as 26 outfits have come together for the unity efforts in Bengaluru, and Kharge has said that the united action by the Opposition parties is against the “vendetta politics” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Leaders of the Trinamool Congress have also sounded bullish on the unity plank of the Opposition parties, claiming that the game for the 2024 Lok Sabha election is in their court now. While the DMK had floated the social justice narrative as a glue for the Opposition parties, Kharge in his statement on Monday sought to give primacy to “vendetta politics (read action by Enforcement Directorate against Opposition leaders)”.
Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar os keeping everyone guessing even while spectacle rolled of the rebels reaching out to him to keep the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) united, which would mean that the Maratha veteran would also be in the NDA camp and not the Opposition. But Kharge has said that he is hopeful that Pawar would join the meeting of the Opposition parties on Monday.
With former Congress president Sonia Gandhi also taking part in the Opposition meeting, it’s a déjà vu for the political observers of once more witnessing the early signs of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). With the DMK and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) along with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar laying grounds for the Opposition unity, the Congress has tactfully moved to the fulcrum of the efforts by sending out the message that the party was sacrificing the political turf in Delhi and Punjab in the larger interests of the unity of the constituents of the non-BJP camp.
By coming out with the support of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against Delhi Ordinance, the Congress has seemingly left its Delhi and Punjab units high and dry even while the likes of Ajay Maken and Sandeep Dikshit had gone hammer and tongue against the Kejriwal-led dispensation. With the Opposition outfits watching out that they cannot agree to either of their leaders as prime ministerial candidate, they are seen to letting the Congress come to the centre stage of the unity efforts amid growing sense that the main opposition party may retain power in two of three poll-bound states in November – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan.
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