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Opposition Group in Bengaluru Named Itself “INDIA,” Next Meeting in Mumbai

Bengaluru, July 17 (ANI): Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Jammu and Kashmir People's Democratic Party (JKPDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and others during the Opposition leaders' dinner meeting, in Bengaluru on Monday. (ANI Photo/ Shrikant Singh)

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Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, July 18: Advancing to the stage of deciding on a name for the new opposition alliance at its second meeting held in Bengaluru on Tuesday, the 26 opposition parties decided on the acronym INDIA as its name standing for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.

The first meeting of the group was held in Patna on June 23 which was attended by the leaders of 15 parties and it had decided to fight against the BJP unitedly.

The opposition leaders immediately termed the 2024 Parliamentary elections to be fight of Modi Versus INDIA to highlight as if the whole nation was fighting against the BJP and its alliance who were meeting in Delhi later in the evening. The West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee asked if NDA would dare to fight against INDIA while the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi commented whosoever fought against INDIA would perish.

“We are defending the Constitution, voice of Indians and the idea of India. You know what happens to anyone who wants to fight the idea of India… The fight is between NDA and I.N.D.I.A, Narendra Modi and I.N.D.I.A, his ideology and I.N.D.I.A. India always wins all fights,” said Gandhi. “The fight is about two different ideas of India… The voice of the country is being stifled. The fight is for the voice of the country. So this name was chosen — I.N.D.I.A,” he added.

The BJP – which is gathering its allies together in Delhi — scoffed. Drawing a parallel with the banned organization SIMI, the BJP’s Amit Malviya said changing the UPA is just regrouping under another name. “In 2024, country will elect Prime Minister Modi, the leader… The future of our country is too precious to be risked with one of the self-serving, corrupt, dynastic parties. It is apparent that they have come together to save their shrinking turfs, not serve the people,” read his tweet.

The alliance would be led by an 11-member co-ordination committee to be appointed at the next meeting to be held in Mumbai. The date of the next meeting was not yet decided, the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who brief media persons after Tuesday’s meeting said.

The name for the united opposition was arrived at after much deliberation on Day 2 of the mega meeting. Sources said the Left parties wanted the word ‘Alliance’ to be changed to ‘Front’ while some parties were not too keen on ‘NDA’ in the name. Shiv Sena UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray pushed for a name that would not have any mention of opposition. Mrs Sonia Gandhi was learnt to be favouring a name in Hindi.

It was Rahul Gandhi who finally came up with the acronym, tweeted Jitendra Ahwad of the Nationalist Congress Party. “His creativity was greatly appreciated,” his tweet read. “Chak de India,” read a gleeful tweet from Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien soon after the name was decided on. “NDA can you challenge INDIA? BJP can you challenge INDIA?” questioned his boss, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Kharge said, “The BJP wants to destroy democracy, Constitution, using autonomous bodies like CBI, ED, vigilance all such institutions against opposition party leaders and workers. This is a grave situation. We have come together to save this situation. How to save the country and the people of the country — this is the issue before us.”

Asked who will lead the alliance, Mr Kharge said, “We are making a coordination committee of 11. At that meeting in Mumbai, we will decide on who the 11 will be, who the Convenor will be, etc. These are small things.” Sources, however, said the possibility of Mrs Sonia Gandhi was named the president of INDIA group with the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who had volunteered to work for bringing the non-BJP parties under one umbrella cannot be ruled out.

Mamata Banerjee said today’s meeting was “very good, constructive, fruitful”. The next meeting in Mumbai will also focus on a Common Minimum Programme, she said. The opposition meeting coincided with the NDA meeting in Delhi, where the BJP, in a grand show of strength, has gathered together 38 parties.

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Referring to the Delhi meet, Kharge claimed the BJP was running scared. “Earlier, they (the BJP) never cared. They never spoke… Tukde Tukde ho gaya tha (the NDA was in pieces)…  Now PM trying to put them together. It shows he is afraid of the Opposition,” Kharge said. About the 38 parties attending the NDA meet, he added, “Don’t know who they are. If they are registered parties, I have not heard that there are so many parties in India.”

Mamata Banerjee said at a press conference after the meeting ended. “We love our motherland. We are the patriotic people of the country. We are for the country, the world, farmers, for all,” she said, adding that people — Hindus, Dalits, minorities, farmers, in Bengal, and Manipur — are under threat from the BJP, whose only job is “buying and selling governments”.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray, and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi also spoke at the press conference. Several leaders were missing from the media interaction as they had to rush to the airport for their flights back home, Kharge said.

“The country’s wealth is going to a select few. The fight is about two different ideas of India. We asked ourselves who the fight is between. Not between the Opposition and BJP. The voice of the country is being stifled. The fight is for the voice of the country. So this name was chosen – INDIA,” Rahul Gandhi said.

During the meeting, Congress president Kharge had said his party wasn’t interested in power or the Prime Minister post. Taking aim at the BJP, he said the ruling party’s president and party leaders are “running from state to state” to patch up with old allies. “We are 26 parties, in government in 11 states; BJP didn’t get 303 seats by itself, used votes of allies then discarded them,” he said at the meeting.

The leaders, who gathered in Bengaluru, had a dinner meeting last evening to formalise the agenda for Tuesday’s closed-door talks.

Besides Mrs Gandhi, Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, chief ministers MK Stalin, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal, Hemant Soren, Mamata Banerjee and RJD chief Lalu Prasad are among those taking part in the two-day meet. Sharad Pawar, whose party underwent a split earlier this month with the rebellion of nephew Ajit Pawar, joined the meeting on Tuesday.

The dinner meeting at the Taj West End Hotel last evening saw Mamata Banerjee and Sonia Gandhi seated next to each other. They had a one-on-one conversation earlier that lasted almost 20 minutes, delaying the beginning of the meet, sources said.

Under the leadership of Kharge, the Congress has kept a low profile, reiterating that it wants to hear the ideas of other leaders. Its support to Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party on fighting the Central Ordinance in parliament has also projected its willingness to be a team player.

“Our challenge will be, all focus, all publicity, all campaigning, all programmes, they will be under the banner of INDIA. If anybody has a challenge, catch us if you can. Save India from disaster. Save the people of India. The BJP is making deals to sell the country, to buy democracy. This is why they don’t let independent agencies function. India will win, the BJP will lose. Bharat will win, the BJP will lose. INDIA will win, the country will win’” Mamata Banerjee tweeted.

“They have ruined the economy and the railways, sold off ships, the sky, the ground and the part under the ground as well. Every person is unhappy in the country today – the youth, farmers, labourers, businessmen, industrialists, housewives, homemakers. Who is not unhappy?” Kejriwal asked.

The group also demanded the implementation of the caste census while asserting that they have come together to defeat the “hatred and violence being manufactured against minorities” as well as “rising crimes against women, Dalits, tribals and Kashmiri Pandits.” In their ‘Samuhik Sankalp (joint resolution) released after the meeting, the parties expressed their steadfast resolve to safeguard the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution.

“The character of our republic is being severely assaulted in a systematic manner by the BJP. We are at a most crucial juncture in our nation’s history. The foundational pillars of the Indian Constitution – secular democracy, economic sovereignty, social justice and federalism – are being methodically and menacingly undermined,” they alleged.

“We have come together to defeat the hatred and violence being manufactured against minorities; stop the rising crimes against women, Dalits, adivasis and Kashmiri Pandits; demand a fair hearing for all socially, educationally and economically backward communities; and, as a first step, implement the Caste Census,” the parties said in their resolution passed “in one voice” at the meeting.