Poll bugle by INDIA sans key allies
INDIA in Patna
- The Opposition bloc INDIA virtually sounded the bugle for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on Sunday when top leaders, including Congress’s Rahul Gandhi who took a break from his cross-country tour, converged in Patna for a mammoth rally.
- Rahul, who is currently on a Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, flew from Madhya Pradesh to Bihar to share the stage with the RJD’s Lalu Prasad and Tejashwi Yadav, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, the CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury and the CPI’s D Raja, besides Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
The absentees
- Notable absentees were the chief ministers of Delhi, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee and MK Stalin, respectively, as well as Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and NCP founder Sharad Pawar.
- This comes as the INDIA constituents struggle to seal a formal seat-sharing deal in Bengal and Maharashtra, and are yet to announce one for Tamil Nadu.
- The Congress has sealed seat-sharing deals with AAP in Delhi, Gujarat, Goa and Haryana but will be a rival in Punjab. It has finalised a seat-sharing arrangement in Uttar Pradesh with the SP.
In Bihar…
- Sunday’s mega rally came as part of Tejashwi Yadav’s Jan Vishwas Yatra that he launched after JDU chief Nitish Kumar jumped the INDIA ship to go back to the NDA fold. A Congress-RJD-Left seat-sharing deal is yet to be announced.
- In Patna, Rahul charged the Modi government with “working for only two-three super-rich people and neglecting Dalits and backward classes who comprise 73% of the population”.
- Kharge, Tejashwi and Lalu targeted Nitish for switching sides ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
- Yechury and Raja denounced the Modi government’s policies, alleging these were only benefiting big businesses, and praised Tejashwi’s emphasis on job creation.
- Akhilesh Yadav posted a picture of himself seated with Tejashwi and Gandhi on X, captioning it: “Great thrones are shaken when enthusiastic youngsters come together (jab joshile naujawan mil jaate hain, bade bade takht hil jaate hain)