Picture of possibilities

A day before a crucial meeting of opposition parties in Delhi, leaders across the political spectrum greeted UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on her birthday on Sunday. DMK president MK Stalin, M Kanimozhi and A Raja called on Mrs Gandhi to greet her on her birthday. DMK leaders invited Sonia and Rahul Gandhi for the inauguration of M Karunanidhi's statue in Chennai on December 16. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Bihar opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav also wished her on her birthday. National Conference leader Omar Abdullah too tweeted his wishes for the UPA chairman on her birthday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi twitter: Best wishes to Smt. Sonia Gandhi Ji on her birthday. I pray for her long and healthy life. A meeting of opposition leaders called by Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo N Chandrababu Naidu is slated on Monday to discuss a grand alliance against the BJP for the 2019 national elections. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav said he would join Congress and other opposition parties in the meeting to forge a common strategy to fight the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal is also expected to attend the opposition meeting. It is for the first time that AAP will attend such a meeting of opposition parties. Earlier, its leaders had participated in protests such as the nationwide strike against rising fuel prices, called by Congress on September 10. However, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has not yet confirmed her participation in the opposition parties. She is believed to have indicated that she will not be a part of the opposition alliance. "Those opposing the BJP, those who want to save this nation, will work together," Naidu, who said he would speak to Mayawati, has said. Mayawati is said to be sulking over the Congress' failure to tie up with the BSP in the poll-bound states, particularly in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Besides Naidu, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar is also working towards resolving the differences between the Congress and its rival political parties so that a broad-based alliance is given a final shape ahead of the 2019 elections. A strong supporter of state-specific alliances, Pawar has pointed out the difficulties in forming a grand alliance in view of the differences between Congress and regional parties such as Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Telangana and AAP in Delhi. The meeting was initially scheduled for November but was delayed due to the Assembly polls in five states.

The opposition's meeting on Monday will have a herculean task to find the common ground among the parties that seek to come together under a grand alliance and take on the BJP as a united force in the 2019 general election. The biggest problem in chalking out a common opposition strategy is that many of the regional parties are pitted against Congress in their respective states and joining forces with the party at the national level would mean compromising on their interests in the state level politics. Another major problem in finding a common ground for the opposition parties in their meeting on Monday is lack of trust between the parties. Some of the opposition parties such as Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Banerjee's Trinamool Congress have been part of the previous NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Naidu has parted ways with NDA only recently when the Assembly election in Andhra Pradesh was only less than a year away. In Andhra Pradesh, TDP was running the government along with BJP until recently. Now, both are ready to fight against each other in order to win supremacy in the state's politics. At a time when Naidu is facing an increasingly stiff competition from the BJP in the upcoming Assembly election, he is spearheading the opposition into a grand alliance. But political analysts are wondering what will stop him from joining the NDA bandwagon after the election Assembly and Parliamentary elections. The scepticism expressed by BSP's Mayawati and AAP's Arvind Kejriwal to the efforts of opposition's unity underlines their distrust about some of the opposition leaders. The opposition leaders are currently working on the formula that they should keep their stronghold safe from BJP's ever-rising sphere of influence and see if they together can win a majority. If they are able to win the Parliamentary elections on their own, they can thrash out the issue of who will become the Prime Minister. In case, they are not able to achieve the magic figure, some of them might end up supporting the next NDA government. Irrespective of the loose talks about NDA and BJP, most of the regional opposition leaders are keeping BJP in good humour. Politics is a game of possibilities and nothing can be ruled out in this game.