New Delhi: Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda led Janata Dal (Secular), Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led by Chandrababu Naidu, YSR Congress Party led by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy and a small party in Bihar are some of the parties not invited for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) meeting on July 18 in New Delhi, even though they are considered sympathetic towards the ruling alliance at the Centre.
On Tuesday 26, Opposition parties will meet in Bengaluru to chalk out a strategy to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led NDA. The NDA, in turn, has claimed that it has the support of 30 parties across India. The NDA meeting in Delhi will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge will chair the opposition meeting.
The two meetings on Tuesday show that India may be heading for a bi-polar contest in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, barring a few southern states where parties such as Bharat Rashtra Samithi, YSR Congress Party, JD(S), and TDP are not in either of the two alliances so far.
To be sure, the political scenario could change fast in the run-up to the elections with some more parties expected to join the two alliances.
Former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha tweeted on Monday clarifying that he will be attending the NDA meeting. “Please do not spread misinformation. I am attending the NDA meeting for which I got an invite yesterday,” said his tweet in Hindi, an hour after he told Hindustan Times that he has not received an invite to attend the meeting.
Till three months ago, Kushwaha was a minister in the Nitish Kumar-led Grand Alliance government in Bihar. After resigning from the cabinet, he met Amit Shah, floated a new party, Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD), and announced its support for the BJP. Although his party was not mentioned in the list of 38 parties attending the NDA meeting which was released by the BJP earlier in the day, Kushwaha was in Delhi, party leaders said and added that he would be attending the meeting.
Mukesh Sahani-led Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), which contested the 2020 Bihar assembly election in alliance with the BJP and won three seats, however, was not extended an invite for the NDA meeting. All three party MLAs had joined the BJP in 2022.
“When I am not part of the NDA, how can I be called for the meeting? We will take a call on joining the NDA after our foundation day function on November 4 and only if the Centre accepts our demand for reservation to the Nishad community. If it takes a call before November, we can announce our decision earlier. Else we will chart out our future course of action. I am comfortable with Nitish Kumar as well,” Sahani told HT.
Both Kushwaha and Sahani were recently provided Y+ category security by the Union home ministry fuelling speculation that they will eventually join the NDA.
In Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats, the NDA has three partners — Apna Dal (Soneylal), NISHAD party, and Om Prakash Rajbhar-led Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP). Rajbhar joined the NDA earlier this week, days after he held a meeting with Amit Shah in New Delhi. All three caste-based parties with a sizeable influence in certain pockets of the state have been invited to the NDA meeting.
On Monday, the BJP got a fillip to its social alliance when a former minister in Yogi Adityanath’s cabinet and another backward classes leader, Dara Singh Chauhan, re-joined the party. He had joined the Samajwadi Party (SP) before the 2022 state assembly elections along with Rajbhar and Swami Prasad Maurya, another leader of backward classes, and had won on the SP ticket.
Similarly hectic political reconfiguration is playing out in Andhra Pradesh, where both the ruling YSR Congress Party and TDP, considered close to the top BJP leadership in Delhi, have not been invited to the NDA meeting. The BJP, instead, has called Telugu film actor Pawan Kalyan, who heads the Jana Sena Party, for the NDA meeting.
Both TDP president Chandrababu Naidu and YSR Congress president and Andhra Pradesh CM Jagan Reddy had met the Union home minister in the past few months, raising speculation that they would be part of the NDA. Naidu was part of the NDA till 2028 when he decided to walk out and become part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Since his party’s defeat in the 2019 assembly election by Jagan’s YSRCP party, Naidu has distanced himself from the opposition alliance and had tried a rapprochement with the BJP.
In Telangana, K Chandrasekhar Rao has softened his stand against the BJP after the Congress’s thumping victory in Karnataka and the grand old party initiating an aggressive campaign in the state for the December assembly election. Surveys in the local media show that the Congress is upbeat in the state and is likely to grab most of the anti-incumbency vote. Rao has tried to spread his party to Maharashtra, where BRS claims to have dented the Nationalist Congress Party’s hold. The TRS is also likely to contest in Madhya Pradesh, where the ruling BJP is in direct contest with the Congress.
In neighbouring Karnataka, the BJP is confident of an alliance with the JD (S) with former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai saying that the talks with JD (S) supremo Deve Gowda and his son H D Kumaraswamy at the advanced stage. However, on Monday, Kumaraswamy told reporters that it was premature to talk about an alliance with the BJP.
While the BJP termed the meeting of Opposition parties in Bengaluru as a meeting of corruption and opportunistic leaders, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge termed the NDA’s meeting a gathering of “factions” of parties.
“It is a meeting of corrupt and opportunistic leaders who know they cannot defeat PM Modi. Their only agenda is to defeat Modi,” said former Union law minister and BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad. Kharge in Bengaluru said, “If he (PM Modi) is stronger than the entire Opposition and he alone is enough for them, why is he calling together the 30 parties? They are baffled by what we are doing, so they are gathering factions of parties to show their strength.”
(With inputs from Vijay Swaroop in Patna, Pankaj Jaiswal in Lucknow and Srinivasa Rao Aparasu in Hyderabad)
