Opinion: Between 2 Opposition Summits, BJP's Growing Nerves

Rarely has a large-sized conference room anywhere in India ever hosted a political gathering quite like this. I do not know what the collective noun for biodatas is, but the no-frills conference room at 1 Anne Marg, Patna was an array of curriculum vitae. The heads of the political parties (considering one representative per party for this calculation) at the Patna summit had a combined experience of 21 terms of Chief Ministership, 41 terms as Members of parliament, and, a monstrous 400 years in public service.

At the beginning of 2023, who would have thought that Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, MK Stalin, Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar, Akhilesh Yadav, Uddhav Thackeray, Arvind Kejriwal, Lalu Yadav, Bhagwant Mann, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, and their key aides would have been engaging around a rectangular table from 11.30 am to 3.30 pm on a sultry Friday afternoon, a couple of kilometres away from Gandhi Maidan in the capital of Bihar? Who would have thought?

And who would have thought that three weeks after the first summit, the same leaders, and a few more, would be meeting again in the Garden City of Bangalore? They are.