After Congress backing, AAP says it will attend Oppn's Bengaluru meet

AAP has decided to attend the two-day Opposition meeting in Bengaluru to decide on a strategy to fight BJP in the run-up to the 2024 parliamentary elections as Congress came out in support of the Arvind Kejriwal-led party against the Centre's ordinance.

The decision to attend the Opposition meeting came at a meeting of AAP's political affairs committee on Sunday evening after the Congress said it was opposed to the Centre's Ordinance.

"The AAP's political affairs committee meeting was held today. Every aspect was discussed in detail and after the meeting was over, I can clearly say this - the ordinance is clearly anti-national," AAP's Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha said.


The first meeting of the Opposition parties, convened by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in Patna on June 23, had ended on an acrimonious note when Kejriwal had given an ultimatum to Congress to support his campaign against the Centre's ordinance.

"From the Trinamool Congress to RJD, JDU, NCP, Samajwadi Party, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena, all have raised their voice against this anti-national ordinance. We will make every possible effort to defeat it," Chadha said.

Over the past two months, Kejriwal has driven an active campaign against the ordinance to ensure that the Opposition is united in the Rajya Sabha when a bill replacing the ordinance is introduced by the government in the forthcoming monsoon session of Parliament. However, the Congress high command was swayed by the opinion of its state unit in Delhi, where AAP has pushed the party to political wilderness by eating into its core vote bank.

Speaking to ET, former Delhi Pradesh Congress president JP Aggarwal said, "This is a national issue concerning the federal structure and Congress' stand is a well-thought out one. It is not Kejriwal's issue. We have come out against BJP's attempt to use the governor and L-G's office to further its agenda against elected state governments."