Sanjana B, Pune
At the opposition meeting held in Bengaluru on July 17 and 18, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge announced the formation of a 26-party alliance. This National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
Declaring that the Congress was uninterested in the post of prime minister the previous day, Kharge, in his inaugural address on Tuesday, said, “Our intention in this meeting is not to gain power for ourselves. It is to protect our Constitution, democracy, secularism, and social justice”. The party president also denied that all differences among opposition parties at the state level were ideological.
This meeting of Opposition parties was supposed to plan strategies to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, party leader Rahul Gandhi, DMK chief MK Stalin, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar, RJD chief Lalu Yadav, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, and Jammu & Kashmir National Conference leader Omar Abdullah were present at the meeting. The night before the meeting, more than 50 leaders of the opposition parties attended a dinner hosted by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
At the press conference, Mallikarjun Kharge admitted to no discussions of the face of India yet. He said that a coordination committee of 11 people would be formed to address this.
However, some state leaders remain opposed to this decision. Karnataka’s regional party, Janata Dal (Secular), headed by former CM H. D. Kumaraswamy, was absent. The party that had previously allied with the Congress and BJP was not among the 26 parties involved in India.
The next meeting will be held in Mumbai after the monsoon session of Parliament ends in August. The Bengaluru meeting, a follow-up to the gathering in Patna in June, was initially supposed to be held in Shimla. However, it was moved to the Karnataka capital due to bad weather conditions.