INDIA to meet this week, Sonia Gandhi may get lead role

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, August 28

Lok Sabha election preparations are heating up with a key meeting of the opposition INDIA alliance scheduled this week to chalk out strategies to take on the BJP.

BJP eyeing early LS poll: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has said the government might hold LS poll in December this year as the “BJP had booked all the choppers”.

On September 1, BJP chief JP Nadda is also likely to hold a review of the ongoing Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana under which Union Ministers have been tasked with nurturing over 160 weak parliamentary segments which the party lost in 2019, but there is no official word on this meeting.

INDIA bloc will assemble for the third time in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1 with a key discussion point being the post of convener and possibly chairperson of the alliance. Although former Congress president Sonia Gandhi is a favourite to lead the bloc with someone else, potentially Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, as the convener, top sources said Sonia may not however be willing. The final agenda for the September 1 INDIA meeting will be finalised at a dinner of 26 party leaders in Mumbai’s Grand Hyatt hotel on August 31.

The naming of the INDIA convener is on the agenda for the upcoming Mumbai meet but whether it would be finally discussed would depend on whether the 26 parties arrive at a consensus on who should convene the bloc.

Nitish Kumar on Monday reiterated that he was not interested in any post. “I do not want anything,” Kumar said in Patna today, close on the heels of NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s meetings with nephew Ajit Pawar, who recently ditched the opposition partners to join the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra. Opposition leaders remain wary of senior Pawar’s politics with Maha Vikas Aghadi constituents Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) publicly stating that the NCP founder’s closed-door meetings with Ajit were confusing the MVA cadres.

With Pawar and Nitish playing their own cards, it remains unclear whether the matter of convenership will be taken up at the Mumbai meeting.

Sonia was the most favoured veteran to offer broad leadership to the alliance with sources saying any grouping to be viable against the BJP has to stay united first. “Sonia Gandhi’s ability to reconcile differences is well known. Whether she agrees is the issue,” a senior opposition leader said.

INDIA bloc hopes to field a common candidate against the BJP in the 2024 General Election but suffers from several contradictions.

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