Everyone is together: Shiv Sena UBT leader Priyanka Chaturvedi on INDIA alliance

The December 6 meeting of the INDIA bloc will be held after a gap of three months since the last one in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1

New Delhi: Ahead of the upcoming meeting of the opposition’s INDIA bloc on December 6 as reports of divisions in the alliance came to the fore, Shiv Sena UBT faction leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said that everyone is together in the INDIA bloc.

“Everyone is together in the INDIA alliance. We are there to fight against all the issues related to unemployment, polarization, farmer distress, crime against women, principles of democracies being undermined. We will look into this matter and adjust things. Since there was short notice, she (Mamata Banerjee) is the sitting Chief Minister. She may not be able to rearrange the schedule, but we will make all possible arrangements for the early conduct of the meeting.” Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury however attacked Mamta Banerjee alleging that she never appealed to the people to vote for the opposition to defeat the BJP.

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“Her attitude was similar even before the elections. There were elections in five states but she never appealed to the people to vote for the opposition to defeat the BJP,” said Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

The December 6 meeting will be held after a gap of three months since the last one in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday that she was “not aware” of any such meeting.

While addressing the media on Monday, the West Bengal CM said that her party was unaware that the INDIA grouping is planning to hold a sitting in New Delhi.

“I don’t know, I have no information so I kept a programme in North Bengal…If we had the information, we wouldn’t have scheduled those programmes. We would have definitely gone (for the meeting), but we have not received any information,” the TMC chief said.

Ahead of the next meeting, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has dialled his alliance partners and invited them to converge. Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction) leader Supriya Sule gave a hint after the Mumbai meeting that the next meeting will be held in the national capital.

Seat sharing for the Lok Sabha polls, which are just four to five months away, is likely to be at the top of the agenda. The next INDIA bloc meeting would also be crucial for Congress, particularly as the party lost Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, the Hindi heartland states that send a large number of members to the Parliament.

However, the Congress could find the going tough in this meeting, with key ally Samajwadi Party having struck a beligerent tone against the Congress in the assembly elections. SP boss Akhilesh Yadav had accused the Congress of betraying the SP by not giving it tickets to contest in a potential alliance with the Congress in MP.

The Congress now desperately needs the alliance to take off if it harbours any hope of giving Narendra Modi and the BJP competition in the 2024 election.

INDIA or ‘Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’ is a group of 28 opposition parties, including the Congress. The parties have come together to take on the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which is led by PM Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and prevent it from winning a third straight term at the Centre in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The first meeting of the joint opposition convened in Patna on June 23 and the second meeting was held in Bengaluru on July 17-18. The third meeting happened in Mumbai during August 31-September 1.

In the Mumbai meeting, the opposition parties adopted resolutions to collectively contest the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections while announcing that seat-sharing arrangements would be finalized as soon as possible through a spirit of give-and-take.

The theme they have chosen for the elections is “Judega Bharat, Jeetega India” (India will unite, India will win) to take on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government.