PATNA: A meeting of opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
Addressing a press conference with JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh by his side, Yadav said that top leaders of most opposition parties, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal have agreed to attend the meeting.
The meeting was earlier scheduled to be held on June 12, but was put off after some of the parties, including the Congress and the DMK, requested a change in date.
JD(U) leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has taken the lead in speaking to several regional satraps besides the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, and the Left to forge unity among opposition ranks to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Nitish Kumar had recently said he was opposed to parties sending any leader except their respective heads to the meeting where the anti-BJP players will chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls next year.
The JD(U) supremo has been pitching for “opposition unity” ever since he snapped ties with the BJP in August last year, following accusations that the ally was trying to create fissures in his party and diminish his standing.
He has held separate meetings with leaders of many parties, including Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge of the Congress, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal, West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and leaders from the Left parties.
As part of the “opposition unity” drive, Kumar has held parleys with not only Congress allies like Uddhav and Pawar but also its opponents like Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao.
In fact, the idea of hosting a meeting of opposition leaders in Patna was floated by Banerjee, who had invoked the memory of Jayaprakash Narayan upon meeting Kumar in Kolkata last month.