23 Parties to Take Part in Opposition Meet in B'luru; Gandhis, Mamata, Nitish, Stalin, Kejriwal to Attend

As many as 23 political parties will attend the opposition parties' two-day conclave in Bengaluru starting on Monday as they seek to firm up a joint challenge to the BJP in next year's Lok Sabha polls.

However, local party JD-S has opted out of the meet amid the rumours of the party joining the BJP-led NDA.

Posters welcoming the national leaders have been erected in Bengaluru's city arterial roads as the Congress, which is ruling the state, wants to send out a message to the country.

Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress' leaders Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O' Brien will attend the meet, along with CPI's D. Raja, CPI-M Sitaram Yechury, Nationalist Congress Party's chief Sharad Pawar and party leaders Jitendra Ahwad, and Supriya Sule are also taking part.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his Janata Dal-United's President Lalan Singh and party leader Sanjay Kumar Jha, Tamil Nadu Chief Ministe M.K. Stalin and His DMK's MP T.R. Baalu, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal, Jharkhand Chief Minister and JMM head Hemant Soren, Shiv Sena-UBT leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and party leaders Aditya Thackeray and Sanjay Raut have also confirmed their presence.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, Samajwadi Party and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, National Conference leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, PDP head and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, CPI-ML chief Dipankar Bhattacharya and RLD chief Jayant Singh Chaudary are also attending.

Also present will be K. M. Khader Mohideen from IUML, Jose K. Mani from Kerala Congress-M, Vaiko from MDMK, Thol Thirumavalavan from the VCK, N.K. Premachandran from RSP, P.J. Joseph from Kerala Congress, E.R. Eswaran from the KMDK and G. Devarajan from the AIFB have confirmed their presence.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will host a dinner on the evening of July 17, followed by formal deliberations the next day. The second joint meeting of the Opposition parties comes after the first meeting was held in Patna.