PATNA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav confirmed on Tuesday that the next meeting of the opposition's Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) will be held on December 17. The meeting was set to be held in New Delhi on December 6 to chalk out the strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
Lalu was posed with queries by journalists in the Buxar district of Bihar about the meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday but was deferred due to the inability of several top leaders to attend. "The meeting has now been rescheduled to December 17," said Prasad, a staunch ally of the Congress and also known to be close to the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Reacting to the results of assembly elections held in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, Lalu said that the Congress party is not weak, but it lost the electoral battle in three states because of the weaknesses of some local leaders. "I don't think the party has grown weak. But it may need to work on its leadership in states like Madhya Pradesh," he told the media.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had called a meeting of opposition leaders in New Delhi on Wednesday to finalise seat sharing ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
However, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed his inability to attend the meeting due to his poor health. Besides Nitish, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, two key leaders in the INDIA bloc, had hinted at not attending the meeting on December 6.
Sources in JD(U) said that Nitish had been suffering from viral fever for the past week and had avoided attending either any official meetings or private functions. He had also not attended the Rajgir Mahotsav being held in his home district, Nalanda.
Instead, JD (U) president Rajiv Ranjan Singh, alias Lalan Singh, and Water Resources Department minister Sanjay Kumar Jha were tipped off to be present at the meeting, which has now been rescheduled to December 17.
At a recent public meeting, Nitish had lashed out at the Congress for neglecting the 'INDIA' bloc during the recent assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. After the Congress's defeat in the crucial polls, many leaders of Kumar's JD(U) have gone on record saying that Congress made a mistake by failing to take regional parties on board and trying to fight the BJP on its own.