Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar seemed buoyant after holding multiple meetings with opposition parties in Delhi on his three-day visit starting on April 11 in a bid to put up a united opposition front for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The chief minister of Bihar met Lalu Prasad (RJD), Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi (Congress), Arvind Kejriwal (AAP), D Raja (CPI), and Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) before returning to Patna on April 13.
Super six
Kumar apparently has taken on the responsibility of bringing together six political parties: Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, K Chandrashekar Rao’s BRS, and Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP.
Among the six abovementioned leaders, Kumar had met Kejriwal on his three-day visit to Delhi where the AAP convener said, “The common man is worried about inflation. There should be a government that can give development to the country and get rid of other problems. Nitish ji has taken the initiative of gathering everyone and shaping an opposition, and we are fully with them.”
Continuing his initiative to unify the opposition and upholding the task of bringing the six parties together, Nitish Kumar along with deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav met West Bengal’s tallest leader, Mamata Banerjee. Afterwards, there was a joint press briefing.
“We share good relations with each other (Mamata). Although I couldn’t meet her in the recent past, we have been in touch with each other. It’s good to see that Bengal has developed so much under her leadership. We have decided that before the upcoming parliamentary elections, we all should unite and get ourselves ready for it. We all should sit together and decide the future course of action. It will be in the favour of the nation. We had a very positive meeting today,” said Kumar. He also took a dig at the BJP-led central government. “Those who are in power right now have nothing to do with the development of the country. Instead, they are advertising uselessly,” said the Bihar CM.
Mamata Banerjee went a step further and said that everyone is already together and will fight unitedly against the BJP. All parties will walk together, she said. “If our thinking is clear, our mission is clear, there is no chance of any harm. The JP movement started from the soil of Bihar, so I have requested Nitishji to hold an all-party meeting in Bihar. Then a message of unity will be given. I don’t have any objection to a united front. In fact, I want the BJP to become ‘zero’ from ‘hero’. BJP is only involved in fake propaganda, it won’t work. I have no personal ego. We just want to work collectively,” said the TMC chairperson.
The meeting with Mamata was an important one as it was believed that she was unhappy with the Congress in Bengal, and the Left parties have been arch rivals of the Trinamool Congress in the state. And because of this, she was attempting a third front without the Congress and Left, supported by leaders like Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, and others. Recently, taking a swipe at the West Bengal chief minister, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said there are more pending cases from the state with the CBI than the rest of India. His remarks came after the agency on Monday arrested Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA Jiban Krishna Saha in the West Bengal teachers’ recruitment scam case. He further claimed that Mamata Banerjee’s magic in Bengal was fading.
After leaving Kolkata, Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav flew on a private aircraft to Lucknow to meet Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, the third leader among the six assigned. Following a half-hour meeting, Akhilesh, his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Tejashwi Yadav, and others held a joint press conference.
Akhilesh welcomed all the leaders from Bihar and said, “The BJP is continuously trying to finish the democratic values of the country. We all are here with the people of India to save the country from unemployment, inflation, and poverty which has reached its peak. Democracy and the Constitution need to be protected. We all want the BJP government to exit so that the country can be saved.”
On being asked whether the face of the opposition was decided, Nitish clarified, “I am not in the race to become the face of the opposition. My agenda is to unite the opposition against the BJP. UP and Bihar together will spring a surprise on the 120 seats in the two states.”
When asked about the BSP and Mayawati, Nitish first evaded the question, but later said, “BSP can be a game spoiler for the opposition, especially in the state of UP. As of now, BSP is surely not in the opposition’s loop.”
BJP’s take on Nitish
Back in Patna, BJP’s Rajya Sabha member and ex-deputy CM Sushil Modi mocked Nitish’s travels and said that his visit to Delhi, Kolkata, or Lucknow is nothing but political tourism and photo op.
“In West Bengal, the BJP went from zero to a party of 64 MLAs and 18 MPs. Now, can Nitish Kumar bring the Congress, CPI(M) and TMC on one platform in Bengal? When there is no TMC in Bihar and JDU-RJD has no mass base in Bengal, then how can Nitish and Mamata help each other? They can only have tea together and make statements,” he said.
Sushil Modi further said that once, two boys (Rahul and Akhilesh) failed to defeat the BJP together in UP; the second time Bua-Babua (BSP, SP) fought together. Both times, the united opposition could not stand before the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added.
BJP’s co-incharge of West Bengal Amit Malviya tweeted, “It is ironic that Mamata Banerjee who once called Nitish Kumar ‘gaddar’ in a rally in Patna, for not backing her campaign against demonetisation, is today speaking about opposition unity. It tells you a lot about both Mamata and Nitish’s politics of opportunism. Mamata Banerjee should worry about losing ground in Bengal. Last time the BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats and that number this time would be 35. The less said about Nitish Kumar the better. With 40 odd MLAs, he managed to remain as Bihar CM, because the BJP chose to honour its commitment, only to be back-stabbed later. People of Bihar and West Bengal will respond at the hustings.”
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