New Delhi, Jul 12 (IANS): Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi will attend the second opposition meeting in Bengaluru on July 17-18 which will also see the participation of 24 parties, sources said on Wednesday.

According to the sources, an invitation of the meeting has also been extended to the MDMK, KDMK, VCK, RSP, Forward Bloc, IUML, Kerala Congress (Joseph), and Kerala Congress (Mani).

The meeting will be hosted by KarnatakaChief MInister Siddaramaiah.

The sources said that Sonia Gandhi will attend the meeting after she was invited by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge.

In the first meeting that took place in Patna on June 23, Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretary (Organisation) K.C. Venugopal and several others had attended it.

The meeting convened by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at his residence had brought the parties together on a single platform to chalk out a strategy against the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

West Bengal Chief MInister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi Chief MInister Arvind Kejriwal, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, NC leader Omar Abdullah, and others had participated in the meeting.