New Delhi: The Congress is planning to stage an Opposition show of strength for the 2024 general elections on May 20, the day of the swearing-in of its government in Karnataka. The party, upbeat over its victory in Karnataka, is inviting all like-minded parties to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka Chief Minister-designate K Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru.
“We are inviting all like-minded parties for the swearing-in ceremony on May 20,” AICC general secretary of organisation, KC Venugopal said. According to party insiders, the Congress was successful in forging an Opposition unity with 19 like-minded parties including the NCP, Shiv Sena UBT, RJD, JD-U, DMK, CPI-M, CPI, RSP, Kerala Congress, IUML, JMM, TMC and AAP during the Budget Session of Parliament demanding a JPC probe in the Adani-Hindenburg issue.
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To take that unity ahead, Kharge is inviting the same parties for the May 20 event and may also involve NC and PDP which had joined Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra of Jammu and Kashmir. Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, who supervised the Karnataka polls, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and the party’s chief ministers, Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan, Bhupesh Baghel of Chhattisgarh and Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh and Chief Minister of Jharkhand Hemant Soren, Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, K Stalin will also be present at the event.
Through the show of strength, the Congress aims to project its resounding victory against the BJP in Karnataka as a defining moment and a positive curve in the country’s politics ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress has already described the Karnataka win as a defeat of PM Modi, who led the BJP’s campaign in the southern state as the face of the saffron party.
“The Karnataka results will have an impact in the Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan assembly polls this year where the contest will be directly between the Congress and BJP. The Congress will have an advantage in all three states. As a result, a Congress vs BJP narrative will gather momentum in the coming months and will play a role in the next Lok Sabha elections,” AICC general secretary Manish Chatrath told ETV Bharat.
“The BJP had dethroned our government in Karnataka in 2019 and in Madhya Pradesh in 2020 through unfair means. We have won Karnataka and will now take back MP from the BJP as well,” he said. Already, JD-U leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD have been working with other regional parties to prepare a common ground for the 2024 national polls and take on the BJP.
Though the TMC leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, AAP convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and SP leader Akhilesh Yadav had reservations over a Congress-led Opposition front, the grand old party’s Karnataka win is likely to bring about a change in the approach of these regional parties.
The SP, AAP and TMC congratulated the Congress over the Karnataka win while Mamata Banerjee was quick to state that the Karnataka results marked the beginning of the end of the BJP and that she was ready to support the Congress wherever the TMC is not strong. Akhilesh Yadav too had expressed similar views.
