Bengaluru: The second opposition parties meeting in the Karnataka capital got off to a flying start on Monday with more than 40 prominent leaders of opposition parties from across the nation attending the dinner party hosted by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress head Mamata Banerjee Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of the JD-U, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi) and party leader and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, Jharkhand Chief Minister and JMM head Hemant Soren, Shiv Sena-UBT chief and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, National Conference leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, PDP chief and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, Samajwadi Party chief and former UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury and others participated in the event.
Siddaramaiah stood at the entrance to welcome each leader to the event.
The leaders held the first round of talks and sent out a message of unity against the ruling BJP.
The formal meeting is scheduled at 11 a.m. on Tuesday and a major announcement is expected to be made after the meet. Sonia Gandhi is hosting a dinner party in the evening and most of the leaders will return to their respective states after the party.
Congress sources claim that Sonia Gandhi and Kharge are most likely to return to New Delhi after the dinner party and Rahul Gandhi will stay back in Bengaluru to host a meeting of state cabinet ministers.
Meanwhile, BJP leader and former CM Basavaraj Bommai has slammed the opposition meet, saying that politics is more important to Congress than the lives of farmers. He also charged that the opposition parties are putting up a show for survival. Most of the regional parties which do not have an existence in their states are coming together and the meeting won’t have any impact, he claimed.
