Several Opposition leaders, including Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, party MP Sonia Gandhi, Samajwadi Party MP Akhilesh Yadav, former Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, during the INDIA bloc meeting in New Delhi.
The Election Commission’s freeze of the Trinamool Congress’s name and symbol has handed the INDIA bloc an unlikely moment of cohesion. Within hours of the interim order, former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, barred, for now, from the party name and twin-flower symbol she has contested under for nearly three decades, said her faction would back the Congress candidate in the Nandigram bypoll, a seat her own camp had meant to fight. Rahul Gandhi called her, Arvind Kejriwal offered solidarity, and Banerjee said, “We will all fight together against BJP.”