UNABLE TO MAKE A DENT

DESPITE THE COVID WOES THAT BEFELL THE COUNTRY, THE MOTN DEEMS THE OPPOSITION’S PERFORMANCE AVERAGE AND SEES MERIT IN THEM UNITING TO TAKE ON MODI

- KAUSHIK DEKA

During the monsoon session of Parliament, there were at least three joint meetings of the floor leaders of Opposition parties—including a breakfast hosted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi—to chalk out a common strategy to corner the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government on the alleged state-backed Pegasus snooping scandal and farmers’ protests. A general sense of despair among the people, triggered by the Covid pandemic and its impact on the economy, seems to have given Modi’s rivals fresh hope of piercing the cloak of electoral invincibility around the BJP. What fuelled this is also the drubbing the saffron party got at the hands of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress in the West Bengal assembly election earlier this year.