Pawar's meet with Opposition leaders on Tuesday amid regional front buzz

An array of Opposition leaders will be meeting Sharad Pawar in New Delhi Tuesday amid signs of an emerging regional grouping ahead of the 2022 Presidential polls and 2024 general elections with the NCP boss acting as sort of the magnet to bring diverse political forces together.

Poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who had led poll strategy campaigns of a number of Chief Ministers from the Opposition camp in past, including that of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin this year, on Monday had a nearly two-hour-long meeting with Pawar, his second in a fortnight, triggering a buzz of his attempts to aid the emergence of an alternative Opposition front to take on the Modi-led BJP in the next Lok Sabha polls.

NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said Pawar will work from Tuesday to unite all Opposition parties and the meeting that he chairs will also dwell on the political situation in the country, apart from discussing the upcoming Lok Sabha session.

The meeting will be attended by former Finance Minister (in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee led NDA) and TMC leader Yashwant Sinha, AAP MP Sanjay Singh, CPI's D Raja, NC's Farooq Abdullah, journalist-turned-former-BJP leader Sudheendra Kulkarni, Samajwadi Party spokesperson Ghanshyam Tiwari, former JDU (suspended) MP Pawan Verma, former Congress (suspended) spokesperson Sanjay Jha, former Rajya Sabha MPs K T S Tulsi (Congress), Advocate Majeed Memon (NCP) and Javed Akhtar (nominated), and NCP MP Vandana Chavan.

Read | Poll strategist Prashant Kishor meets Sharad Pawar

Yashwant Sinha, a bitter critic of Modi is playing a key role in the Opposition unity attempts under the banner of Rashtriya Manch floated by him in 2018.

Malik tweeted that besides them, other eminent persons from different sections like Justice A P Singh, Karan Thapar, journalist-turned-former-AAP leader Ashutosh, former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi, K C Singh, Colin Gonsalves, economist Arun Kumar, and Pritish Nandy will also be attending the meeting.

It will be interesting to see if any senior Congress leader attends the meeting as the main Opposition party earlier stonewalled the attempts to project Pawar as the probable Chairman of UPA before the next general elections.

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut had pitched for it in March this year even as Pawar, in December last year, had distanced from such a campaign saying he has no interest in becoming UPA Chairperson.

The meeting of Pawar with regional leaders in the national capital is happening also at a time when former Maharashtra Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan's remarks about a Congress Chief Minister and talk of 'going solo' in upcoming Mumbai local bodies polls. This has created rumblings in the MVA government headed by Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray in which Pawar plays a key role in keeping the allies united.

Also Read | Wider alliance of anti-BJP parties necessary: NCP leader Nawab Malik after Pawar-Kishor meet

The meeting of Pawar with regional leaders on Tuesday is being seen as a corollary to Opposition Chief Ministers following a common strategy of writing letters to the Prime Minister on Centre's Covid-19 strategy. Also, following her party's West Bengal victory, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee calling for larger Opposition unity attempts.

The meeting, which is of a preliminary kind with no clear contours of a united Opposition face as yet, is, however, significant as this explores the future of how Opposition leaders will work together given Presidential elections are due next year. Pawar is a leader with relations across the political spectrum and can pull strings, which not many in the Opposition can do.

In the 2012 President poll, UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee had managed to breach the NDA ranks and got support from its allies JDU and Shiv Sena. Many believe that while Pawar is indeed the magnet of Opposition unity for the 2024 polls, the 2022 Presidential polls could serve as the first key test for any such attempt.

With the Congress so far not opening its cards on the matter, the regional grouping could be looking at the possibility of a non-Congress, non-BJP National Front kind of arrangement for the time being.

Before the meeting of Opposition leaders at Pawar's residence, the NCP general body also met in Delhi on Monday.