It would have been better if...: Mayawati targets Cong, to skip Opposition meet on June 23

Uttar Pradesh leader Mayawati, a day before a widely anticipated opposition unity show in Bihar, announced that she would skip the meeting and targeted Congress.

Slamming the key meet organized by Nitish Kumar in Patna, Mayawati said that the opposition is raising issues together ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the meeting "was more like joining hands, not hearts".

"In a country suffering from inflation, poverty, unemployment, backwardness, illiteracy, ethnic hatred, religious violence etc., it is clear from the state of the Bahujans that parties like the Congress and BJP are not capable of implementing the humanistic egalitarian constitution framed by Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar," the former UP chief minister said on Twitter.

"Before any such meeting...it would have been better if these parties, to justify people's faith in them, had come clean on their intentions. How long will 'moonh mein Ram, bagal mein chhuri' last?" Mayawati said in another tweet.

Opposition Meet in Patna

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar organized the meeting as part of his ongoing campaign to corral anti-BJP parties and establish opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The meeting is considered the first tentative move towards a joint opposition against the BJP, which won 303 of 545 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.

The meeting might put the Congress on the same stage as state-level rivals like the Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).