OPINION | PATNA MEET: A STEP TOWARDS A STRONG OPPOSITION?

Leaders of 15 opposition parties met in Patna on Friday and expressed their resolve to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha elections unitedly to defeat Narendra Modi and BJP. However, towards the end of the meeting, Aam Aadmi Party skipped the joint press conference saying it will not be part of any alliance with Congress unless it denounces Delhi ordinance. All the leaders who attended the meeting said, Narendra Modi is an autocrat, he has crushed democracy, all parties must unite to save the republic and Constitution. But BJP leaders pointed out that most of the leaders actually want to save their legacies. They said, among those who attended the meeting were Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule, Lalu Yadav and his son Tejashwi, and Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aditya. BJP leaders allege that these parties and leaders have nothing to do with Constitution, whether it is Rahul Gandhi, or M K Stalin, Mehbooba Mufti or Akhilesh Yadav, Hemant Soren or Omar Abdullah. They also say that all these leaders are presently running the parties of their parents, and they have come together not to save India, but to save their families. However, my view is that the 'fevicol' that joins all these leaders is something different. One thing that I noticed as common about these leaders, who have been forced to sink their differences and come together, is the pile-up of ED, CBI and I-T cases. All these leaders or their relatives are tied up in the mesh of investigations. ED and CBI cases have deeply hurt their self-respect. In earlier regimes, there  used to be cases before Modi became PM, but the number of these cases used to be few. Someone or other used to save some leader, investigations used to took place and they appeared in courts, but there was no fear of going to jail. The 30 leaders from 15 parties who were seen today in Patna, have one, two or four close relatives languishing in jail. All these leaders know, that till the time Narendra Modi is Prime Minister, it will be difficult to protect their skin. Those who managed to join BJP, left their parties, and those who could not leave their parties are now busy in the opposition unity drive. This, in my view, is an alliance of wounded satraps. If the alliance continues, it will definitely have effect. As of today, I can only say, they may not be able to form a government, but they can surely emerge as a strong opposition. 

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