No Oppn front without Congress: Jairam

New Delhi: No Opposition front to take on the BJP is possible without the Congress and if a coalition is formed for the 2024 general elections, the party will have a central role in it, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has said. In an interview with PTI, Ramesh, however, said it was too early to talk about all this right now as the Congress' first priority was the upcoming elections in Karnataka and the string of state polls this year.

Ramesh's remarks come after both Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Uttar Pradesh's Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) saying the two parties would stay away from both the Congress and the BJP, and indicating possible talks with other regional players ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Asked whether the TMC and SP's actions could jolt Opposition unity, Ramesh said, "The TMC, Samajwadi, people keep meeting, the Third Front, Fourth Front will continue to be formed, but it is necessary to have the Congress in the Opposition."

"If an Opposition coalition is formed, the Congress will play a central role in it. No front is possible without the Congress. But it is too early to talk about this," he told PTI. First there is an election in Karnataka, after that there are elections in Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram, he noted. "This year, we will be completely busy with state elections, we will see about 2024 elections later," the former Union minister said. "Right now meetings will continue, positioning will continue…'I will form a third front, I will form a fourth front, I will form a fifth front', all this will continue," he added.

The TMC may have its own logic, I do not want to say anything more than that." He said 16 political parties are united on the demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the Adani issue. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) did not sign the letter to the director of the Enforcement Directorate, but they were with us in spirit if not in body, he said.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday asserted that the BJP would be politically finished in the days to come, "just like the Congress", for allegedly misusing central agencies against opposition parties. Yadav also pressed for the caste census which, he said, would be a major issue in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. "Earlier, the Congress used to misuse the central agencies, and now the BJP is doing the same. Congress is now finished. The BJP, too, will meet a similar fate. They are only sending agencies after those parties who are fighting the BJP," he told a press conference here.