After weeks of planning and back-room negotiations, over two dozen leaders of over a dozen political parties "from Kanyakumari to Kashmir", as they said, flew to Patna for a much-hyped opposition unity meet called by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
They talked for around four hours to come to the conclusion that they should continue talking. Even that conclusion doesn't seem unanimous. Conditions apply.
As the obvious contradictions revealed themselves, some pragmatic participants drew reassurance for themselves and their core social constituency by saying, "It is no less an achievement that we all came together to meet."
Patna was apparently too hot and humid to iron out the wrinkles and to agree enough to even join hands and raise them in unison for the customary photo-op.
The stated agenda - one nation, one candidate from the opposition grouping in each parliamentary constituency against the ruling BJP - was left for discussions at some other place, at some other time.
The participants were given three weeks to recoup and ponder over way forward. The cooler climes of hilly Shimla were chosen as the next setting for a meeting. Since Himachal Pradesh is ruled by the Congress, the party will be the host there. But the signs so far are not very good.
Arvind Kejriwal, in all likelihood, will try and make headlines by announcing fresh conditions to attend the meet. Given the harsh words from Kejriwal and co. against the Congress on the Delhi Ordinance row, the Congress leadership will be under pressure from its own leaders, should the party extend an invite to AAP.
The motto for the coalition, 'Modi Hatao Desh Bachao' has long been in existence but the question of how is perhaps going to take some time, at least till the results of the next round of elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram, in for months. The BJP and the Congress will go head-to-head in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Prime Ministerial aspirant, Telangana Chief Minister and BRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao's popularity will be tested, and depending on the outcome, his stance will be interesting to see.
It's a different matter though that in 2018 the BJP had lost all three states, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, to the Congress but the Modi factor weaved its magic in the parliamentary elections in these states and delivered superb numbers for the BJP from there. But irrespective of that, the political narratives would be set according to the outcome, as has been happening after the Karnataka results.
It was fine for the leaders in Patna to boast of their 'Kashmir to Kanyakumari' attendance. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin went to Patna but left before the press conference that was meant to showcase the number of attendees. Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah from Jammu and Kashmir were there but Mamata Banerjee chose to leave even as Omar Abdullah was speaking.
From the southern states, beyond and around Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, there was no one. From Andhra Pradesh, neither Jagan Mohan Reddy of the ruling YSRCP nor Chandrababu Naidu of the opposition TDP were in the meeting. From Telangana, K Chandrashekhar Rao was not invited. While CPM party chief Sitaram Yechury was present at the meeting discussing opposition unity, the CPM-led Kerala government cracked down on Congress state unit president K Sudhakaran over a financial cheating case.
From Kerala, no CPM leader joined the meet. Other important regional leaders like Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, Akali Dal in Punjab or regional players in Haryana were either ignored or were not interested. Jayant Chaudhary of RLD, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party ally in Western UP (Congress ally in last parliamentary election), gave it a miss.
The post-meet press conference in Patna was one of its kind, where after the monologue of about a dozen leaders, no questions were allowed. It was more than obvious that they were not willing to answer obvious questions, which could be somewhat sticky.
Arvind Kejriwal and his entourage of Bhagwant Mann, Raghav Chadha and Sanjay Singh left the meeting in a huff after he failed to make Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge yield to his coercive tactic on the Delhi Ordinance issue. They boycotted the combined press conference. It was also an embarrassment for Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav who, on behalf of the Congress, twice visited Kejriwal's newly controversial official residence to convince him to join the proposed opposition coalition.
Even by leaving the meeting halfway, Kejriwal, who had zero Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 parliamentary elections, ensured that he consumed much airtime. That won't please the others, particularly the Congress.
Though Mamata Banerjee spoke eloquently of opposition unity, her own party leader and its 2022 presidential candidate Yashwant Sinha blasted Nitish Kumar ahead of the meeting. "Only a year ago, when elections were taking place for the post of President, Nitish Kumar did not think it fit to even take my telephone calls. Today he is the torch-bearer of opposition unity. Momentous 12 months for change of heart," Sinha said in a tweet.
At the so-called press conference, Nitish Kumar went the extra mile to humour Rahul Gandhi, who was perhaps a bit upset with the way deliberations may have proceeded during the meet. Rahul Gandhi didn't immediately oblige him. He smiled only after Nitish Kumar nudged Lalu Yadav to speak about Rahul Gandhi's beard and marriage plans.
Ironically, a meeting for a purpose as serious as shaping the country's fortune in 2024 ended on talks around the length of Rahul Gandhi's beard, and his elusive marriage plans.
The few words Rahul Gandhi spoke were about the delicious Bihari Liiti-Chokha and Gulabjamun lunch. The other part was about two ideologies that were in conflict today - 'BJP's divisive ideology and Congress's unifying ideology'. Other leaders who spoke after him checked him by saying "people gathered here belong to different ideologies...."
Wasn't an opposition coalition already in place? The United Progressive Alliance chaired by Sonia Gandhi? If the proposed opposition coalition is given some other name, then the Congress will lose its primacy as the fulcrum of opposition unity. From what the Trinamool, AAP and some other parties indicated, they will not accept the Congress in the pole position of the new coalition.
First, like the Congress, all other parties that gathered there (with the exception of the Left) are dynastic parties.
Second, these parties have grown in shape and size at the cost of the Congress, not the BJP. Even then, a magnanimous Congress agreed to piggyback on these parties at its own cost.
Many leaders spoke about why Patna was the best place to initiate an oust-Modi campaign. This was in reference to the JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) movement in the mid-1970s against Indira Gandhi. They did not name either JP or Indira Gandhi or the Emergency and conveniently chose not to go into the details of it. That would have been too embarrassing for all present.
Patna is the wrong place to begin a public campaign against Modi on the issue of "governance", for serious reasons. Since Independence in 1947, Bihar has been ruled by the Congress, Lalu Yadav's RJD and Nitish Kumar's JD(U). They are allies today and are responsible for the social and economic standing of Bihar. People will judge that on its own merit.
Nitish Kumar, who is trying to play the architect of the opposition alliance for 2024, must keep in mind the fate of Chandrababu Naidu. In 2018, Naidu was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and was equally energetically trying to cement opposition unity for 2019 after exiting the BJP-led NDA. Lately, not much is heard of him.
(Sanjay Singh is a senior journalist based in Delhi)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.