In what was being seen as the first step towards the formation of a united opposition front against the BJP, even though the organisers denied that it had anything to do with cobbling together a 'third front', leaders of eight political parties and several intellectuals attended a meeting of the Rashtra Manch at veteran leader Sharad Pawar's residence in Delhi on Tuesday evening.
The eight parties whose leaders attended the meeting included host Pawar's NCP, the Trinamool Congress, which was represented by Yashwant Sinha, who is also the founder of the Rashtra Manch, the Samajwadi Party, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Left parties, the National Conference and the RLD.
Amongst the 21 participants in the meeting were Samajwadi Party leader Ghanshyam Tiwari, former JD(U) leader Pawan K. Verma, CPI leaders D. Raja and Binoy Viswam, NC's Omar Abdullah, NCP leaders Majeed Memon, Supriya Sule and Vandana Chavan, CPI(M) leader Nilotpal Basu, RLD's Jayant Chaudhary and Shahid Siddiqui, Susheel Gupta of the AAP and former Congress spokesman Sanjay Jha.
Also present were non-allied political voices like Sudheendra Kulkarni and Ravinder Manchanda, former Delhi High Court chief justice A.P. Shah, writer Javed Akhtar, economist Arun Kumar and former Indian ambassador to Iran K.C. Singh.
The announcement on Monday about the Rashtra Manch meeting had given rise to speculations that this could well be the beginning of the efforts to cobble up a joint opposition front. The meeting was announced following a meeting between Pawar and election strategist Prashant Kishor, a second such meeting between the two in ten days. It was also being discussed whether a non-Congress front was in the making.
However, the organisers played down the meeting, and in fact vehemently denied that it was meant to bring together the opposition parties on a common platform before the next Lok Sabha elections in 2024. It was also pointed out by them that rather than parties, individuals had been invited, and they included leaders from the Congress, who opted to stay away. They said the meeting was called to discuss the current political and economic situation in the country.
Addressing the media after the two-and-a-half-hour long meeting, NCP's Memon, a founding member of the Manch, said he wanted to clarify that it was not a meeting of anti-BJP political parties convened by Pawar. “The meeting was held at Pawar ji's residence. But it was not called by him. The founding members of the Rashtra Manch convened the meeting,” Memon said.
He said it would be wrong to describe it as a big political step that excluded the Congress. “There was no discrimination on political lines. The Congress members were also invited,” he said, adding that the Congress leaders invited included Vivek Tankha, Manish Tewari, Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Shatrughan Sinha.
SP's Ghanshyam Tiwari said the meeting saw participants rising above party lines to discuss how an alternate vision can be created that takes into account the issues that concern the common man, such as joblessness, farmers' issues, attack on democratic rights, freedom of press, inflation, rising prices of petrol and diesel and Centre-state relations.
Tiwari said a team will be constituted under the leadership of Yashwant Sinha, which will formulate a people's agenda. He also said the Manch would aim at bringing into its fold people from different walks of life.
Even as the organisers denied that the aim of the meeting was not to form a political front ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the buzz had refused to die down, and the meeting has attracted immense attention for signs of possible political combinations that could come into existence in the run up to the next general elections.