Rahul Gandhi, Kharge to attend Opposition meet in Patna on June 23

New Delhi: A meeting of opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference with JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh by his side, Yadav said that top leaders of most opposition parties, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal have agreed to attend the meeting.

The meeting was earlier scheduled to be held on June 12, but was put off after some of the parties, including the Congress and the DMK, requested a change in date.

Nitish Kumar had recently said he was opposed to parties sending any leader except their respective heads to the meeting where the anti-BJP players will chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls next year.

The idea of a meeting of opposition parties in Patna was first mooted by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a press conference she addressed jointly with Kumar in April.

Accompanied by his deputy Tejashwi Yadav, Kumar had visited Kolkata to meet the TMC chief who exhorted him to carry forward the legacy of Jayaprakash Narayan, referring to the socialist leader's revolt against the Indira Gandhi government before and during the Emergency.