Days after seven non-BJP, non-Congress Chief Ministers failed to turn up for a meeting he had proposed, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said the group is a governance platform and not a political grouping ahead of the 2024 general election.
Last week, Mr. Kejriwal had in a letter invited the G-8 members to meet in Delhi on March 18 for dinner and then a joint press conference on March 19. However, the proposed meeting did not take place.
Members of the “G-8” group according to Mr. Kejriwal’s letter are Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Tamil Nadu CM M.K. Stalin, Telangana CM K. Chandrashekar Rao, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann.
Mr. Kejriwal said, “The platform consists of eight Chief Ministers with whom many rounds of discussions have happened. It is not a political platform. It is a governance platform.”
‘Learn form each other’
“I’m violating the protocol by announcing it. We eight were supposed to do a joint press conference. Every month, all eight of us will go to one of these eight States and learn from the good work done in that State. The idea is to learn from each other.”
Mr. Kejriwal said that the letter which got leaked was to finalise dates, but March 18 and 19 did not suit everyone as Assembly sessions were going on and everyone said to keep it after mid-April. He said that no Congress Chief Minister was invited for this.
“When it is finalised, we will tell you about it,” he said.
Earlier this week, when asked about the letter, JD(U) general secretary K.C. Tyagi said, “We don’t believe in an Opposition alliance without the Congress. Nitish Kumar has made it clear that a national Opposition alliance should be put together on the Bihar model, where we have taken everybody on board, including the Congress and the Left parties.”
The Aam Aadmi Party, the Trinamool Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) are working closely together to stitch a non-BJP, non-Congress alliance, and as part of its first step, the parties are mulling to file petitions in courts against the misuse of investigating agencies like the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate, according to sources.
