Curious absentees and surprise attendees of Rahul Gandhi’s breakfast meeting

NEW DELHI: Leaders of 15 opposition parties attended Rahul Gandhi’s breakfast meeting before they pedalled on bicycles in a show of solidarity to Parliament on Tuesday morning. While this may be a positive development for the opposition, there were at least 10 parties who remained absent.
Besides the 80-odd Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs of the Congress, including Rahul Gandhi, their counterparts of DMK, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Shiv Sena (SS), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Samajwadi Party (SP), CPI(M), CPI, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Kerala Congress (M), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), National Conference (NC), Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) were present in the meeting held at the Constitution Club.
Led by Rahul Gandhi, the MPs cycled to Parliament from the Constitution Club as a symbolic protest against the high prices of cooking LPG, petrol and diesel.
Tom-toming the breakfast meeting hosted by Rahul Gandhi, Congress spokesperson termed it as "historic". He said it was a "trailer for 2024 (Lok Sabha elections)".
After the morning meeting, Rahul Gandhi posted two tweets. The first one said, “One priority - our country, our people.”

The second one, in Hindi, said, “Neither our faces are important nor our names. The only important thing is that we are people's representatives. Each face represents crores of people of India who are feeling inconvenienced due to inflation. Are these ‘achhe din’?”

If there was TMC’s surprise inclusion, there also were 10 opposition parties which were conspicuous by their absence. They included Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Sukhbir Singh Badal-headed Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Delhi chief minister Arvind Singh Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), HD Kumaraswamy’s Janata Dal (S), Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao-headed Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and Suhaldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) of Om Prakash Rajbhar.
The absence of JD(S) and PDP surprised many. The JD(S) and Congress were coalition partners in the Karnataka government headed by Kumaraswamy in 2018. PDP was also a significant absentee as NC, another member of the Gupkar Alliance, was present in the meeting.
Without the support of the MPs from all these parties, the opposition is unlikely to put up a strong and united face in the remaining days of the monsoon session of Parliament. The session is slated to conclude on August 13.
Besides, without them, the opposition is unlikely to put up a united front against the BJP-led NDA in the 2024 general elections.
Among the opposition parties which attended the meeting, while the DMK is Congress’s ruling coalition partner in Tamil Nadu, NCP and SS are with it in Maharashtra. Similarly, JMM is its ruling coalition partner in Jharkhand.
Lalu Prasad-led RJD is Congress’s coalition partner in Bihar while Akhilesh Yadav-headed SP was its alliance partner in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election in which the slogan ‘UP ke do ladke’ had gained currency.
The Congress has a complicated relationship with the CPM and CPI. They are their rivals in Kerala but had contested as alliance partners in this year’s West Bengal assembly election.
TMC had earlier chosen not to attend the last meeting of opposition parties convened by the Congress. Besides, the Congress and TMC had separately contested the Bengal polls.
But Mamata met Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul in New Delhi during her visit to the national capital last week. This seems to have thawed the strains in their relationship, resulting in the participation of her party.
These 14 parties seem to be on the same page as the Congress on chalking out a common strategy on the floor of the house in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha during the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament.
The Congress has been protesting in Parliament the use of Pegasus spyware, the three farm laws and inflation forcing the two houses to adjourn multiple times every day since July 19.