NEW DELHI: With BJP and Trinamool Congress locking horns over the Darjeeling and Basirhat flareups and the CBI probing party leaders in the Narada and Saradha scams, the West Bengal party played an assertive role in pushing for opposition unity and Gopal Krishna Gandhi 's candidature for the vice-presidential poll.Trinamool's aggression is likely to show in Parliament where it hopes to shape a united opposition while also agitating outside the House and on social media.Days before the monsoon session of Parliament opens on July 17, all the attending parties accepted a proposal from West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee to hold a countrywide protest against the Centre's policies which she said were causing miseries to farmers across states.While Congress, Left and Trinamool had all decided on Gandhi's name, TMC MP Derek O'Brien proposed the former governor's name at Tuesday's meeting, where all agreed to the choice.Once the name was finalised, O'Brien communicated Banerjee's message to other leaders about issues that needed to be jointly highlighted against the Modi government, including "political vendetta" against parties.BJP ministers and leaders "inciting communal violence" in various parts of the country, farmers' unrest across states, Centre hitting at "federal structure of the Constitution" were some of the talking points. Trinamool sought to make common cause with other parties, mentioning that leaders like P Chidambaram, Lalu Prasad and Arvind Kejriwal too were targeted by central agencies.Trinamool is also looking to work on a common platform to campaign against the government and BJP on social media.It said there was a need to use digital media as BJP had launched campaigns on social media to target other parties and leaders.The process had started with a concerted effort from the opposition to counter BJP chief Amit Shah's "chatur baniya" (clever trader) remark about Mahatma Gandhi when the tweets went viral. The social media platform that opposition parties have devised to take on the ruling party is '#Save India from BJP'.Meanwhile, the NDA will soon announce its candidate for the vice-presidential poll. "NDA will announce its candidate in the next two-three days," a BJP member said.

Source: Times of India July 11, 2017 23:58 UTC