A couple of weeks ago, as opposition leaders met over a zoom call to discuss some top posts within the INDIA alliance, a visibly angry Nitish Kumar walked out after Sonia Gandhi suggested that his name, which had been proposed by several parties, needed Mamata Banerjee’s nod as well.
Sources say that at this point, Rahul Gandhi intervened to tell everyone that Mamata, who was not attending the meeting, had squarely refused to back Nitish for the post. At this point, the Bihar Chief Minister said he would not accept the Convener’s position and logged off. The rest of them spent another few minutes trying to figure out how to calm him down.
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Sources say that at this point, Rahul Gandhi intervened to tell everyone that Mamata, who was not attending the meeting, had squarely refused to back Nitish for the post. At this point, the Bihar Chief Minister said he would not accept the Convener’s position and logged off. The rest of them spent another few minutes trying to figure out how to calm him down.
Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/india-is-congress-missing-the-plot-in-oppositions-big-battle-1.100796488
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV
#UAEnews #India #politics
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NewsTranscript
00:00Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to leave the opposition alliance and go back
00:08to the BJP, well, that was clearly political opportunism. He did it to save his kursi or
00:14his chair as they say, and much has been written about that. But the fact also is that it's
00:18yet another sign of just how fragile the opposition grouping is, and it looks like really it's
00:25coming apart at the seams. For one, Nitish Kumar was the architect of the India alliance.
00:30He's the one who took the initiative to bring all opposition parties together. Today, he's
00:34not part of the grouping at all. Secondly, as a prominent chief minister of a Hindi heartland
00:40state, he was an important voice for the opposition to have in their camp. Also somebody who was
00:45pitching very strongly for a caste census, not just in Bihar, but nationally. This is
00:50issue that the opposition has been hoping to really play up in the general election.
00:55But it is, as I said, yet another sign of just how bad things are in the opposition camp.
01:01The DMC and the Congress have been bickering, have been at each other's throats very publicly
01:05almost every day. Mamata has said she'd fight the Lok Sabha elections alone. The AAP has said
01:11it's not going to go for an alliance with the Congress in Punjab. Meanwhile, their seat-sharing
01:16talks that the Congress had with the Samajwadi party in UP, they don't seem to have gone anywhere
01:21with the SP announcing on its own that it's giving only 11 seats to the Congress out of 18 in UP.
01:28And then also announcing its first list of 16 candidates for the parliament elections.
01:32So all of this shows just how much of a disarray the opposition camp is in. And they're really
01:38also not able to structure an effective narrative to counter Modi and the BJP.
01:43It's clearly trouble ahead for them. We are literally weeks away from the general election
01:48and the opposition camp is still struggling to find its feet.