PATNA: Top leaders of 17 opposition parties had a nearly four hours long joint meeting in Patna to chalk out a roadmap for a united front against the Bharatiya Janata Party in the forthcoming 2024 Lok Sabha polls and aiming to set aside their differences and fight together as one. Altogether about 32 leaders were present for the meeting. 

The meeting was mooted and hosted by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal-United and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) at the chief minister's official residence at  1, Aney Marg.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the chief of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) had arrived in Patna a day earlier and met RJD president Lalu Prasad and former Chief Minister Rabri Devi at their residence. The other leaders all arrived today early morning to attend the meeting. 

Addressing a joint press conference after the meeting, Nitish Kumar said, "We had a good meeting and several leaders expressed their views during the meeting, all 17 parties have decided to work together and contest the Lok Sabha elections unitedly." He added that the leaders of all the parties have agreed to meet in the next few days to give final shape to their plan of fighting together.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced that the next meeting of opposition leaders would be held in Shimla in Himachal Pradesh next month to prepare a common agenda and take decisions on how to move forward.

There were some apprehensions about Aam Admi Party (AAP) not attending the meeting as they had in a way threatened to boycott it on the grounds that Congress had not cleared its stand on whether to oppose the Centre's ordinance on the control of administrative services in Delhi however they did attend the meeting along with Delhi chief minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and AAP's Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann and party MPs Raghav Chaddha and Sanjay Singh. 

Apart from Nitish, Tejashwi, Mamta and Lalu Prasad, leaders who attended the meeting included AITC leaders Abhishek Banerjee and party MP Derek O’Brien and leader Firhad Hakim.

MK Stalin chief of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and party MP TR Baalu, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Kharge and party MP KC Venugopal, Sharad Pawar chief of Nationalist Congress Party and her daughter and senior party members Supriya Sule and Praful Patel, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) chief Uddhav Thackeray and his son party leader Aaditya Thackeray along with party MP Sanjay Raut.

Lalan Singh of JDU, Sanjay Jha and Manoj Jha both senior leaders of the RJD, Hemant Soren chief minister of Jharkhand and chief of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Akhilesh Yadav heading the Samajwadi Party

Sitaram Yechury general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Omar Abdullah president of the National Conference party, Mehbooba Mufti chief of the People's Democratic Party, D. Raja General Secretary of the Communist Party of India and Dipankar Bhattacharya general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation.