New Delhi: Making the most serious effort till date to bring the entire Opposition on a common platform to take on the Narendra Modi government in 2019, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday met top leaders and regional satraps, including Congress President Rahul Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar and Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav. All the leaders decided to meet in the national capital soon and in the future chart out a Common Minimum Programme for a pre-poll or post-poll alliance.
The leaders also made efforts to side-step the question of who will lead such an alliance if it comes into being. "Any leader will perform better than Narendra Modi," Mr Naidu quipped when asked whether the Opposition would be able to provide a credible alternative to the PM.
In the same vein, the Congress President, whose party many feel are trying to project him as the face of the Opposition alliance, said it has been agreed that the principal idea is to defeat the BJP and defend democracy and institutions of this country. "All other ideas, we will discuss later," he said, adding, “Everyone is going to work together”. “Your interest is in sensationalism but we have to work together to deliver people's aspirations," he added when asked the question again. The TDP chief, who had been the NDA coordinator during Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee's Prime Ministership, described his new-found bonhomie with the Congress, whom his party had blamed for the bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh, as a "democratic compulsion".
Mr Gandhi on his part said both of them have decided "not to get into the past" but talk about the present and the future as it is "critical" for the country. "We have had a past. Both of us have agreed we are not going to get into the past. We are going to talk about the present and future because it is critical for our country, he added.
At a separate press conference later, Mr Naidu maintained that there are only two sides in the country now-one is BJP and the other is anti-BJP. Last week the TDP chief had said that it was not possible to form a government at the Centre without a national party. Though TDP as a party was a product of anti-Congressism, it might be recalled that both the parties have entered into an alliance to fight the Assembly elections in Telangana.
