"We are together, meeting to held on Dec 16 or 18": Sanjay on INDIA bloc

NEW DELHI: Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut on Wednesday said that the next meeting of the INDIA bloc can take place between December 16 and 18 and many things including the face of the alliance will be decided at that time.

"The INDIA alliance meeting was supposed to be held today but some prominent leaders were not available. There is a wedding in Mamata Banerjee's house, MK Stalin is busy with the relief operation in his flood-hit state, Nitish Kumar is not well, and Akhilesh Yadav is not available, therefore this meeting will be held on 16th or 18th of December. The face etc. everything will be decided in the meeting. We are together and you will see its result in 2024," Sanjay Raut said.

Earlier Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had called a meeting of the INDIA bloc leaders for today. Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren had informed Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge of his inability to make it to a meeting on Wednesday. "I will be busy here. I spoke to Kharge Ji yesterday, maybe a representative from our side will go" Hemant Soren told reporters in Ranchi.

Seat sharing for the Lok Sabha polls, which are just four months away, is likely to be at the top of the agenda. The next INDIA bloc meeting would also be crucial for Congress, particularly as the party lost Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, the Hindi heartland states that send a large number of members to the Parliament.

The first meeting of the joint opposition convened in Patna on June 23 and the second meeting was held in Bengaluru on July 17-18. The third meeting happened in Mumbai during August 31-September 1.

Another Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also confirmed that the INDIA bloc would convene soon "The meeting has been called immediately after the election outcome. Discussions about calling the meeting were going on earlier too. Since the alliance has sitting CMs and they were having trouble in coming to Delhi by dropping everything else they expressed their inability to join the meeting. But there is no problem of any kind. We will rework around the schedule...The meeting will be held at the earliest and within the INDIA alliance we will discuss the upcoming strategies" Chaturvedi said.

However, the BJP claimed that the INDIA alliance was a flop and only made for photo opportunities. Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said, "When Kamal Nath had made the remark for Akhilesh Yadav, it had become clear that this alliance is just for photos but not in reality..." The INDIA alliance had appeared on shaky ground when the SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav accused the Congress of betrayal after the Congress failed to reach a seat-sharing agreement for the Madhya Pradesh election.

The Samajwadi Party has mellowed its stance now, party spokesperson Rajinder Chaudhary said that the results in the assembly polls would strengthen the INDIA bloc.

"National President of Samajwadi Party and former Chief Minister Shri Akhilesh Yadav has said that the results of the recent elections will further strengthen the India Alliance and these results should be a matter of concern for the BJP. The public mood is for change. When tomorrow there will be elections for the central government, why will the public not want change? In Uttar Pradesh, PDA will defeat NDA on 80 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats.

The double engine government of BJP does not have a single development work of its own to count" Rajinder Chaudhary said in a press statement.