Sharad Pawar emerging as key interlocutor among opposition parties

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi met Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday night. The meeting came hours after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the Gorakhpur and Phulpur by-elections, and a day before the Congress plenary session.

In another development, Lok Janshakti Party chief and union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, a constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre, called a meeting of all Dalit members of Parliament on Thursday evening.

Paswan had hosted a similar dinner after the BJP's rout in Bihar assembly polls in 2015. The meeting comes in the wake of Rashtriya Janata Dal defeating the BJP in Araria Lok Sabha and Jehanabad Assembly seats on Wednesday, and the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party unitedly defeating BJP in Phulpur and Gorakhpur.

The Congress plenary session, the first under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, will convene here on Friday. It will elect a new Congress Working Committee. While there is a view that at least half of the 24-members be elected, it is likely the Congress leadership comes around to the view that all be nominated.

Pawar and Trinamool Congress chief, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, are two senior former Congress leaders who have indicated they were willing to accept the leadership of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, but cannot be expected to play lieutenants to Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi will be meeting Banerjee when she in Delhi later this month.

Pawar has invited all top opposition leaders for a meeting here on March 28. Banerjee is also likely to attend. Rahul Gandhi's meeting with Pawar, where NCP Lok Sabha member and Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule was also present, comes after Sonia Gandhi hosted a dinner at her residence for opposition leaders on Tuesday.

Sources said Pawar and Rahul Gandhi discussed reviving the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra, and the contours of a possible united front of opposition political parties against the BJP.

However, not all opposition parties agree on the need for a broad secular platform. In Hyderabad, Communist Party of India (CPI) chief S Sudhakar Reddy said a one-on-one fight between BJP-led National Democratic Alliance candidates versus a united opposition candidate was possible in most states, but not at the national level.

However, several opposition parties, including the NCP and Trinamool Congress, are of the view that a broad platform against Modi-led BJP could be self-defeating, as it would offer the PM an opportunity to paint all opposition with the same brush of their leaders being involved in corruption, and they coming together to defeat him since he provided an honest government.

Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien says the opposition should fight Modi-led BJP in 31 separate battles in the 31 states. In Uttar Pradesh, there are two views within the Congress whether it should align with the putative Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance, or fight separately to eat into the BJP's upper caste votes.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) chief Sitaram Yechury, however, feels any broad platform of opposition parties should first agree on a policy agenda. He says mere arithmetic of 'index of opposition unity' may not work.

In Lucknow, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said "past incidents" between his party's leadership and BSP chief Mayawati "have to be forgotten". He said the victory margin of his candidates would have been more had paper ballots been used. He also said his party's relations with the Congress too continued to be good. The Congress had fielded candidates on both the seats in UP.

After the results were announced, Yadav had driven to Mayawati's residence to thank her for her party's support. On the possibility of SP-BSP alliance for 2019, Yadav said he didn't want to predict the future. On Rahul Gandhi, Yadav said: "We both are young and together will have to find a way out to the problems facing the country. Rahul Gandhi has congratulated me as well as other senior leaders and I have thanked them all."