Sharad Pawar, the proprietor of Nationalist Congress Party has invited Opposition leaders and other prominent personalities for a meeting today. Earlier the 80-year-old Prime Minister-ship aspirant for three decades, met poll strategist Prashant Kishor on Monday — the second time in 10 days. Speculation is rife that he is trying to stitch a coalition of non-BJP parties for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

Earlier, the rumor that Pawar had met Home Minister in Ahmedabad, last month, was not denied by any of the parties to that meeting. The Coalition Government in Maharshtra is barely functional. News papers are excited about possible formation of new third front without Congress Party. But look at the guest list of Pawar. His party spokesman Nawab Malik disclosed it on Twitter. According to him:

“Pawar is working to unite all opposition leaders. May be, the meeting was to discuss it. The party’s national executive meeting is also taking place in the national capital tomorrow,”

Following is the guest list:

Prashant Kishor, Farooq Abdullah, Yashwant Sinha, Pawan Verma, Sanjay Singh, D Raja, Justice AP Singh, Javed Akhtar, KTS Tulsi & Karan Thapar, Ashutosh, Advocate Majeed Memon, MP Vandana Chavan, former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, KC Singh, Sanjay Jha, Sudheendra Kulkarni, Colin Gonsalves, economist Arun Kumar, Ghanshyam Tiwari and Pritish Nandi.

At the outset I wonder, What is the role of Javed Akhtar, a script writer in movies who is out of action for a long time except blurting out provocative statements on twitter. Yashwant Sinha of course will represent Mamta Banerjee. What will SY Quraishi do? Perhaps he is for the Muslims of India? Amazing that after remaining in Government service all his life he is still a representative of Muslims only.

The three journalists namely Karan Thapar, Ashutosh and Pritish Nandi who had always been batting for Congress seems to have been invited as representatives of Congress Party in unofficial way. Actually this is the reason why I am sharing these facts. The activist journalists would for the first time be called upon to report truthfully to the Congress Party about the outcome of the meeting.

That is interesting.