While the audience is coming to hear KCR, they are also curious about Kejriwal, who they see to be a leader capable of taking on Modi. The importance and significance of the gathering of some of the nation’s top opposition leaders at the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) rally here on Wednesday seemed to escape the majority of the crowd.
English speeches by Kerala Chief Minister and CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan and CPI leader D Raja highlighting the “attacks” by the BJP-led Centre on the Constitution and Judiciary and calls to “save democracy from the BJP” were met with raucous cries that demanded Telangana Chief Minister and BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao to speak.
The addresses in Hindi by Delhi CM and Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal, the party’s Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also drew little or no reaction. It was only the mention of KCR that stirred the public.
In an attack on the BJP, Pinarayi said: “We have a peculiar situation in which a political formation that was not part of our national freedom struggle is in power. The followers of those who tendered unconditional apologies to the colonisers and promised to serve the imperial crown are at the helm of affairs today. They have been and remain antagonistic to the values of our anti-colonial struggle. Ideas such as secularism, democracy, federal structure, social justice and equality… they do not know these values on which India has been built as a sovereign, democratic, republic.” The crowd, that numbered over a lakh, met the speech with near silence.
Mann, who is a hit at rallies in the north with his jokes, tried the same here, but the audience seemed to get little of his speech peppered with shayari directed at the BJP.