Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar said he would persuade all opposition parties to forge unity based on a common minimum programme to provide an alternative to the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
The opposition stalwart said the Bharatiya Janata Party had been rejected in a majority of the states where it was ruling, adding that the saffron party had toppled elected governments to grab power. If the people have rejected the BJP at the state level, their (citizens) view will not be any different at the national level, the NCP chief asserted.
Informing that he would put forth his view in the meeting of opposition parties to be held in Patna in Bihar on June 23, Pawar said, All non-BJP parties need to sit together and think about forging opposition unity on the basis of a common minimum programme. The BJP made big assurances, raised expectations of people but did nothing. It is time to provide an alternative, the former Union minister said.
Queried on the Bharat Rashtra Samithi led by Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao speaking about making inroads into Maharashtra, Pawar said the Congress-NCP alliance had faced reverses in the 2019 polls due to the presence of Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA).