After first breaking the ice with Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar now appears to have done the same with two other strong Congress ‘baiters’ – Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.Given the hostility that the mercurial Bengal chief minister and the Samajwadi Party president have appeared to harbour against the Congress, it had been an impossible concept for Banerjee and Yadav to join hands until Nitish stepped in.While Banerjee had recently said that her party, Trinamool Congress would “go it alone” in Lok Sabha polls, Yadav Yadav had called the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress the “same” in response to Congress’s invitation to the opposition parties to join the concluding function of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra at Srinagar.After meeting the Bihar CM – purportedly tasked by the Congress to reach out to the opposition parties, particularly to the ones with an already troubled relationship with the grand old party – Banerjee and Yadav spoke in a similar vein. Now, Kejriwal, Banerjee and Yadav seem to be in the same opposition parties’ club – one which seriously wishes to work collectively to oust the BJP from power. The change in opposition behaviour must have come as a welcome surprise to Nitish Kumar. After he dumped the BJP and joined the multi-party alliance or ‘mahagathbandhan’ in Bihar in August 2022 he began efforts to unite the opposition. He has the Congress in the rainbow coalition of seven parties in the state and has steadfastly rejected any opposition front devoid of the Congress, even advocating for the centrality of the Congress in the opposition.Tejashwi Yadav, Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Nitish Kumar address the press after their meeting on April 12, 2023. Photo: Twitter/@RJDforIndiaIt is assumed that Kumar persuaded the Congress – in his meeting with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and leader Rahul Gandhi on April 12 – to agree to his role as the anchor of the process of bringing together parties as disparate as AAP, TMC, Samajwadi Party, and Telangana’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi. Also read: Nitish Kumar’s Call for Opposition Unity Comes With a StrategyKharge and Gandhi described the meeting as “historic”. On the same day, Kumar and Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav had met Kejriwal. “I am completely with Nitish ji. We will work collectively to oust the most corrupt BJP government from power and save democracy,” Kejriwal had said.Striking a similar note and flanked by Kumar and Yadav in Kolkata, Banerjee said, “All opposition parties will fight together against the BJP in the upcoming elections. We have no personal ego. I have made just one request to Nitish ji. Jayaprakash ji’s movement started from Bihar. If we have an all-party meeting in Bihar, we can then decide where we have to go next. But first, we have to give a message that we are united. I have said earlier, too, that I have no objections. I want BJP to become zero. They have become a big hero with the media’s support”. Akhilesh Yadav also said, “We are with you. The opposition will work together to oust the BJP from power and save democracy, constitution and the country”. In making the three party chiefs speak as one, Nitish has used all the “guile, tact and camouflage” he is known for to make the process of unifying the opposition – arguably the most daunting task – look simple. He first met the Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav on April 12 ahead of meeting the Congress brass and others. And he has taken Tejashwi Yadav at meetings with Kejriwal, Banerjee and Yadav. This gives the message that he too is united with the RJD, once his opponent. And that others would do well to resolve differences similarly.Kumar had also kept his plan to meet Banerjee a closely guarded secret. No one had a whiff of it until Sunday evening. Banerjee too maintained due secrecy. It was on Monday, April 24, when the plane carrying Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav flew off to Kolkata that journalists knew about it. BJP leaders in Patna – state BJP chief Samrat Choudhary and party leader Sanjay Jaiswal – called the meetings as “opportunistic” and “conclave of corrupt forces” against the Prime Minister’s battle against corruption. But it goes without saying that the meetings will be cause for worry for the BJP.Sources close to Nitish revealed to this writer that the CM was working out to have a joint meeting of most of the opposition parties including the Congress in the near future to take forward the process of unity.But now Nitish is in for bigger challenges. It won’t be easy to bring the TMC, the Congress and the Left – all important stakeholders with conflicting interests in West Bengal – together.Trinamool Congress chief, Mamata Banerjee, and Samajwadi Party chief, Akhilesh Yadav, in Kolkata on March 17, 2023. Photo: Twitter/@samajwadipartyUttar Pradesh offers a rather more complex setting – it is still not known what course Mayawati, whose Bahujan Samaj Party is the biggest Dalit outfit in the state, will take and if the Congress-SP alliance could make a difference with the BJP which by far is the strongest party in the heartland state. Nitish has challenges galore in the two states.Also read: As the Anchor of Opposition Unity in 2024, Nitish Kumar Faces His Biggest TestWest BengalThe BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 in West Bengal despite having been far behind the TMC in vote share. The Hindutva party aligned with the tribal parties in the Darjeeling hill region and exploited the division of the anti-BJP votes among the TMC, the Congress and the Left parties. Banerjee fought back in the 2021 assembly elections winning 215 seats against the BJP’s 74. Her party had a 48.02% vote-share against the BJP’s 37.97%. Thus, while BJP has got the number two status in West Bengal, it is far behind Banerjee in terms of popular votes. However, the Hindutva party might win some seats in 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the event of the division of anti-BJP votes among the TMC, Congress and the Left.Banerjee had secured power in Bengal by trouncing the Left. What used to be the Congress’s support base shifted to Banerjee after she left the grand old party and formed her TMC. The TMC cadres are perennially at war with the Left’s on the ground-level, making it practically difficult for her, the Left and also the Congress to have an electoral alliance. It is to be seen how Nitish helps the TMC, Congress and Left execute this.Uttar Pradesh:Uttar Pradesh offers an even more complicated scenario from the oppositions’ point of view. First, the most populous state has sent 62 MPs including Narendra Modi (from Varanasi) out of 80 to the Lok Sabha in 2019. With Adityanath for two consecutive terms in UP, the state has emerged as Hindutva’s biggest stronghold. With Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura – sites associated with the Hindu deities – UP offers a salubrious climate for the Sangh Parivar’s radical Hindutva to flourish. The party has made inroads into several non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav Dalit communities, making it almost invincible in the heartland state. The BJP which secured over 41.29% votes against 32.06% of the SP in 2022 assembly polls will be a strong contender even if the SP and the Congress come together.Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, media educator and independent researcher in social anthropology.