Pawar meets Kharge and Rahul, vows for opposition unity

Mumbai NCP chief Sharad Pawar met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party leader Rahul Gandhi in the national capital on Thursday and pledged to take forward the process of opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, even as the BJP took a dig at the outreach, saying similar efforts did not yield results previously.

The meeting was part of Congress’s outreach program to meet all the leaders to unite the opposition parties for the upcoming state elections and Lok Sabha elections next year. The meeting between the three leaders lasted for around 45 minutes at Kharge’s residence in New Delhi.

The Congress underlined that they are committed towards Opposition unity and towards that end have also started holding deliberations with senior leaders from other parties as well. Pawar insisted that those who keep a distance from Congress such as Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal also need to be brought together for opposition unity.

Pawar’s meeting came a day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy, Tejashwi Yadav, met the Congress president and Gandhi to build a united opposition platform ahead of the 2024 elections.

The Congress party’s meeting with Pawar assumes significance as the NCP chief had recently downplayed the allegations of fraud and stock manipulation against the Gautam Adani-led Adani Group but later said that his party will not oppose the demand for a probe by a joint parliamentary committee, by the Congress and 19 opposition parties for the sake of unity.

In this backdrop, a united front of Congress and NCP was significant. Gandhi said that the process to unite the opposition has started. “This is just the beginning. All of us are committed to this process.” Kharge told the media they discussed nothing else but the subject of opposition unity. “We are talking with everyone one by one. Yesterday met leaders from two parties (Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal),” he said, adding, “Today Pawar saheb has come. He is also of the same view that like-minded parties should come together, as we all want to save democracy, Constitution, freedom of speech and misuse of autonomous bodies among other things.”

Congress insiders said that Pawar was unhappy as he was not given any responsibility in the process of holding talks with Opposition leaders, in which Kharge took the lead. This is going on despite him being one of the strong proponents of Opposition unity, who has made many attempts for the same in the past. “The party leadership tried to pacify the veteran leader and he is likely to be asked to hold talks with those leaders who do not like Congress,” said a senior Congress leader.

Pawar hinted the same after the meeting by saying some people will be deputed to speak to other parties for opposition unity. “There are many parties who believe in this program (united opposition) but there is a need to approach them.”

“This is just the beginning. The talks with other important opposition parties, be it Mamata ji, Kejriwal have yet to be started. A few people among us will now be deputed to start talks with them as well,” the veteran leader added.

The BJP, however, mocked the Opposition parties’ bid for unity as ‘thugbandhan’ (coalition of thugs) of parties who are neck-deep in corruption. “The people are aware that these parties have no common policies or ideology and make false promises to win elections. Such experiments had failed in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls,” Union minister Anurag Thakur said in Shimla.