Sharad Pawar To Attend Opposition Meet In Bengaluru On Tuesday

Senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar will attend the opposition meet at Bengaluru on Tuesday.

The 82-year-old leader skipped day one of the meeting and will head directly to Bengaluru for the full day of talks among leaders of 24 opposition parties.

"NCP National President Shri Sharad Pawar and working President Supriya Sule will attend the meeting called by opposition parties on Tuesday 18th July in Bengaluru," confirmed NCP Chief spokesperson Mahesh Bharet Tapase.

The development comes a day after his surprise meeting with nephew Ajit Pawar, who recently split from the NCP and joined the Eknath Shinde led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Maharashtra.

Ajit Pawar along with Hasan Mushrif, Chhagan Bhujbal, Aditi Tatkare, Praful Patel and Dilip Walse Patil met the Pawar senior at the Y B Chavan Centre in south Mumbai.

NCP's Rajya Sabha member Praful Patel, who belongs to the Ajit Pawar camp, said Sharad Pawar is like an idol to us and they met him to seek his blessings.

"We requested him (Sharad Pawar) to keep the NCP united. We also asked him to think about our request over the next some days and guide us. He listened to us quietly but said nothing," Patel said.

He said the ministers of Ajit Pawar camp did not take Sharad Pawar's prior appointment but came to the Chavan centre directly after they came to know that he was present there.

Leaders of 23 opposition parties have been invited for the second unity meeting being convened by the Congress in Bengaluru, which would see them further strategise plans to take on the BJP in the next Lok Sabha polls.

In their first meeting in Patna, they resolved to take on the BJP unitedly in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Close to 50 leaders from Opposition parties are attending the two-day meeting on July 17 and 18.

Here is the list of leaders attending the Opposition Meeting

Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, K C Venugopal, Mamata Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O Brien, D Raja, Sitaram Yechury, Sharad Pawar, Jitendra Ahwad, Supriya Sule, Nitish Kumar, Lallan Singh, Sanjay Kumar Jha, M K Stalin, T R Balu, Arvind Kejriwal, Hemant Soren, Uddhav Thackeray, Aaditya Thackeray, Sanjay Raut, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Tejaswi Yadav, Manoj Jha, Sanjay Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, Ramgopal Yadav, Javed Ali Khan, Lal ji Verma, Ram Achal Rajbhar, Ashish Yadav, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Dipankar Bhattacharya, Jayant Singh Chaudhry, KM Kader Mohideen, P K Kunalikutti, Jose K Mani, Vaiko, G Renugadevi, Thol Thirumavalavan, Ravi Kumar, NK Ramachandran, J J Joseph, Francis George K, E R Eswaran, A K P Chinraj and Devrajana.