The leaders of 26 Indian opposition parties are meeting to firm up their strategy to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party in the general election due next year.
Top opposition leaders including the Congress’s Sonia Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal are participating.
Reports say the group may also pick a leader for the coalition on Tuesday.
This is the second big meeting of the opposition in the run-up to elections.
They are expected to discuss issues such as seat-sharing – how many seats each party would contest – and a common programme for the election in the two-day meeting being held in Bengaluru city (formerly Bangalore) in the southern state of Karnataka.
But taking on the BJP – which won more than 300 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha (the lower house of India’s parliament) in 2019 – will be a formidable challenge even for a mostly united opposition.
The BJP governs around 15 states (India has 28 states and eight federally administrated territories) either by itself or as part of a coalition. It is India’s richest political party with a declared income of 19.17bn rupees ($233.67m; £178.4m) in 2021-22. And its biggest strength in a national election is the popularity of Mr Modi, who has been able to sway even voters who may have chosen a different party in state polls.
Meanwhile, opposition parties are grappling with their own challenges.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, was disqualified as an MP in March after he was convicted and sentenced to jail in a defamation case related to comments made about Mr Modi’s surname at an election rally in 2019. Unless his legal appeal is successful, he cannot contest next year’s election.
Many of the opposition parties are also at loggerheads with each other in states such as West Bengal and Delhi due to differing political ideologies.
Some, like the Nationalist Congress Party, are battling internal defections, while others are trying to deal with a lack of unity among senior state leaders.
However, observers say that a strong anti-BJP sentiment is uniting the opposition, pushing them to look past their differences.
On Monday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that opposition parties will “work closely together to foster an agenda of social justice, inclusive development and national welfare”.
“We want to free the people of India from the autocratic and anti-people politics of hate, division, economic inequality and loot,” he added.
Reports say that Sonia Gandhi may be chosen as the coalition’s president, but there is no official confirmation yet.
Meanwhile, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is also set to hold a meeting of 38 allies on Tuesday in the capital Delhi.
On Monday, BJP president JP Nadda had criticised the opposition meeting, saying its foundation was based on “the politics of selfishness”.
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30 January
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