Opposition meeting: Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi is expected to take part in the joint Opposition meeting slated to be held in Karnataka’s Bengaluru this month, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said on Monday (July 10).
The joint Opposition will hold its second meeting in Bengaluru on July 17 and 18. This meeting was earlier scheduled to be held on July 10 or 12 in Shimla, however, due to bad weather conditions in the city, it was rescheduled to a new date and venue.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar had said the next opposition meet will be held in Bengaluru on July 13-14. As those dates were said to be clashing with Assembly sessions in a few states, it was rescheduled to July 17 and 18.
Informing about Sonia Gandhi’s possible presence in the meeting, Shivakumar said that Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who attended the first meeting in Patna on June 23 along with Rahul Gandhi, has urged Sonia Gandhi to join the next meeting.
"A meeting of leaders of all opposition parties (in the country) will be held on July 17 and 18, as already announced. All the leaders are going to come. Mallikarjun Kharge (AICC President) has requested Sonia Gandhi to participate in this meeting. We have got a message that she will be participating in this meeting," Shivakumar said.
“We will welcome all leaders who want to join this great movement for change in this country,” he added.
The first meeting was held on June 23 to bring all parties together on a single platform to chalk out a strategy against the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Top leaders of several Opposition parties had attended the Patna meeting convened by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at his residence. Mamata Banerjee, Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray, Mehbooba Mufti, Omar Abdullah, and others had participated in the meeting.
Congress to hold silent protests
Deputy Chief Minister Shivakumar, who is also the state Congress president, said that the party has decided to hold silent protests on July 12 under Kharge’s leadership at all the state headquarters against the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi from the Lower House of the Parliament.
“The protest will be held from 10 am to 4 pm at Freedom Park in Bengaluru by covering our mouths with black cloths", Shivakumar said.
All office-bearers, public representatives, and a large number of workers of the party, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, will be participating in the protest against the "conspiracy of the BJP government at the Centre", Shivakumar said.
The Congress has said it will move the Supreme Court, after the Gujarat High Court refused to stay Rahul Gandhi's conviction in a 2019 defamation case over his Modi surname remarks, and alleged that the government is finding newer techniques to throttle his voice.
(With PTI inputs)
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