Sharad Pawar hosts meeting of opposition leaders in Delhi

In New Delhi,a meeting on Tuesday at veteran politician Sharad Pawar's house, attended by the leaders of eight parties including TMC, AAP and the Left The Congress was missing.Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha said he had asked Sharad Pawar to host the gathering of his outfit Rashtra Manch to "debate current events". "The meeting was called by Yashwant Sinha, not Sharad Pawar, this was not a political meet," stressed Majeed Memon, a leader of  Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). "There are talks that the meeting was for a third front without the Congress, which is not the truth. There is no discrimination. We called all like-minded people. We also invited Congress leaders. I called Vivek Tanha, Manish Tiwari, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Shatrughan Sinha for the meeting. They couldn't come. It's not true that we didn't invite Congress,"  Memon asserted, when reporters asked why the Congress was MIA at a gathering of opposition parties.

National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, RLD's Jayant Choudhary, the Samajwadi Party's Ghanshyam Tiwari; AAP leader Sushil Gupta; CPI's Binoy Viswam and CPM's Nilotpal Basu were among those who attended the meet. "It was not a political meeting but an interaction among like-minded people. Issues like Covid management, 'attack' on institutions and unemployment were discussed," Nilotpal Basu told reporters. Others at the gathering were retired Justice AP Shah, former ambassador KC Singh and lyricist Javed Akhtar. Senior lawyer KTS Tulsi, former chief election commissioner SY Qureshi and senior lawyer Colin Gonsalves skipped the meet.