India’s opposition parties meet to formulate strategy for 2024 general election

New Delhi, India | Xinhua | Key leaders of 26 Indian opposition parties on Tuesday met in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru to formulate a strategy for the country’s general election due next year.

The leaders have converged in the Karnataka capital to come up with a common agenda that will form the basis of the election manifesto of all parties.

This is the second big meeting of the opposition parties in the run-up to the general elections. The first meeting was held last month in Patna, the capital city of Bihar in which 16 parties participated.

In the 2019 general elections, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi won 303 seats in the 543-member strong Lok Sabha (locally the lower house of India’s parliament). Apart from this, BJP is in power in more than half of the Indian states, either directly or as part of a ruling alliance.

Meanwhile, the BJP is trying to garner support from its allies to put up a strong image of itself.

The BJP president J. P. Nadda has announced that 38 National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners have confirmed their attendance to a meeting to be held in the national capital on Tuesday. ■