It’s only nine months left for the general election 2019 to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. At a time when all the parties are focussed on numbers, the opposition is still not united as they should have been, it seems.
Only a few days ago, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief cleared the air during a party meeting in Mumbai saying that the party wins the maximum seats will claim the Prime Minister’s post. Now former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has joined the chorus saying it would take five minutes to select a PM for the opposition.
The five-minute formula presented by Lalu is another indication that the opposition is still divided — at least in opinion. Lalu Yadav, during an interview with NDTV, said the prime ministerial candidate can be picked “in a meeting of all like-minded party leaders in five minutes”. The former Railway minister was on parole from jail on medical grounds.
This very statement makes it clear that unanimity on the candidature of the PM is far-fetched and there’s hardly any chance that the opposition would project someone for the coveted post.
The region powerhouses like Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati are also ambitious about being the country’s PM. They all know that it’s impossible to become a PM unless they are in the opposition and perhaps that’s the reason they are still together.
Meanwhile, BJP has been ridiculing the Congress and other like-minded parties since none of them could spell out as who could be the PM in case they get an opportunity to form the government. And these statements are only bolstering BJP in more ways than one.
Lalu Yadav went on to attack the BJP in the interview and clearly said that BJP hasn’t done anything worthwhile in its previous term. “You tell me — except for changing the goal posts, what else they have done?” the 70-year-old leader lobbed the question to the channel.
The Rashtryia Janata Dal leader though has his nemesis in Nitish Kumar who is running the Bihar government with the help of BJP and there’s hardly any chance of reconciling again. “He used to talk about RSS-Mukta Bharat” (an India free of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s ideological mentor). But now, Nitish Kumar is running the government with BJP, so there’s no question of joining hands once again,” the veteran leader told the channel.
Lalu Yadav is expected to surrender in court on Friday.