New Delhi: A day after the fledgling united opposition front met its first real challenge, with possibly a majority of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) legislators walking out of the party to join the Eknath Shinde government in Maharashtra, the Congress announced that the next opposition meeting will be held in Bengaluru later this month. Close on the heels of the Maharashtra fiasco, Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal’s announcement was evidently meant to signal that the opposition forces will not buckle under pressure. Venugopal directly attributed the defections in the NCP to “the BJP’s dirty tricks department”.“This is not a legitimately elected government, but an ED-facilitated power grab. The Maharashtra government is a product of corruption and sin. The people have very well identified the traitors, corrupt and compromised leaders of Maharashtra and each of them will be taught the lessons of their lifetime in the next elections,” the Congress leader said, before announcing that the opposition meet to iron out the details of a united front against the BJP will be held on July 17 and 18 in Karnataka’s capital. He, along with other top Congress leaders, extended full support to the Sharad Pawar camp.The 83-year-old NCP supremo, who faced a similar rebellion three years ago, held a press briefing to say that his party will regain its strength in another three months and that he hopes to bring the rebel legislators to his side soon. He also said that he has experienced similar defections many times in his 50-year-old political career and declared himself as the face of the party. Given that Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel, the two senior NCP leaders who are leading the current rebellion, are claiming that they were still in the NCP and command the loyalty of a majority of MLAs, the challenges that the senior Pawar faces are manifold.Firstly, it is clear that the rebel duo will attempt to pull a coup and claim the NCP election symbol, similar to what Eknath Shinde did last year. Secondly, Pawar will have to restructure his entire party leadership again, as several prominent leaders who held great sway in different regions of the state appear to have switched sides with the Ajit Pawar-Praful Patel duo. And thirdly, the weakening of the NCP is likely to impact Sharad Pawar’s position in both the state-level Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition and the national opposition front against the BJP.Also Read: Ajit Pawar Is the Very Antithesis of Modi’s ‘Naya Bharat’Yet, Sharad Pawar will have a significant role to play in the political manoeuvring that the new dynamics will force in Maharashtra. His experience will be vital in the strategies that the opposition will employ ahead of both the Lok Sabha elections and the state elections in 2024. As most of the opposition leaders have indicated, the rebellion in the NCP hasn’t come as a surprise nor has it thrown the opposition bus off the road. Speculations had been rife that Ajit Pawar may stage another rebellion for weeks now. Precisely because of that, most constituents of the opposition front that is going to meet in Bengaluru this month have attacked the BJP for joining ranks with NCP rebels, a majority of whom were facing corruption charges and were under the scanner of various investigative agencies.The Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United), Congress, Trinamool Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, and most others in the opposition camp, have used the occasion to attack the BJP for allegedly encouraging illegitimate practices for political gains. They said that the BJP-led Union government is selective in acting against opposition leaders, claiming that it brushes the allegations against those who choose to join the BJP ranks under the carpet.The opposition has unitedly been highlighting the selective nature of the BJP’s rhetoric against corruption. This is a retort to the saffron party’s allegation that the opposition front is nothing but a unison of “corrupt” forces. Not only senior BJP leaders but Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has attempted to brand the opposition front as a “corrupt” political force. Congress and opposition leaders at Siddaramaiah’s swearing-in ceremony. Photo: Twitter/@KhargeBJP changes plansThe past few months have shown that the opposition front-in-making has forced the BJP to initiate talks with parties like the Telugu Desam Party, Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal), and Janata Dal (Secular) to forge an alliance before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The move was seen as a cop-out for the BJP, which had systematically sidelined all its previous allies after it attained a tremendous majority in the 2019 parliamentary polls. At the same time, the BJP is also rethinking its plans because of increasing factional fights in some states and a sense of anti-incumbency brewing against it in some states. Even right-wing thinkers have floated the idea that Hindutva and Modi’s popularity may not be enough to effectively tackle the opposition front.The NCP rebellion comes soon after the BJP faced its worst-ever defeat in the Karnataka assembly polls. The Modi-led Union government has intensified its crackdown on opposition leaders to stymie their efforts to unite. At the same time, the BJP has initiated the Uniform Civil Code debate once again to polarise the electorate along religious lines, and deflect attention from the opposition’s campaign against issues such as price rise, unemployment, and corruption. The saffron party may now make several attempts henceforth to expose cracks in the opposition’s ranks through various political means.It is now up to the opposition parties to take up the challenge and plan ahead to contain the damage. The rebellion in the NCP, a small but significant party in the opposition’s scheme of things, signals that the political callisthenics in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls have just begun.