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Congress Plenary: Spelling Out Intent To Unite The Opposition

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-02-27 10:36:47

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

The 85^th plenary session of the Congress party ended in Raipur on Sunday. The party once again reiterated that it is the only party in India that has not compromised on it ideals and has always taken the lead to fight the divisive and authoritarian politics of the BJP/RSS. The declaration at the end of the session said that Congress was the "only party that has never compromised with the BJP/RSS and its despicable politics" and reaffirmed its commitment to confront "BJP's authoritarian, communal and crony capitalist onslaught".

Earlier during the session, the party had said that its future lied in the "unity of secular and socialist forces"{. It also tried to rubbish the talks of a Third Front (an alliance of opposition parties minus the Congress) by saying that such a front will end up helping the BJP in 2024. The party said that "there is an urgent need for a united opposition to take on the NDA on common ideological grounds. Emergence of any third force will provide advantage to BJP/NDA".

In short, what the party is trying to say is this: that any opposition alliance without the Congress is not going to work in displacing the BJP/NDA and within the alliance of like-minded parties ideologically opposed to the BJP, the Congress is best suited to provide leadership. Having said this, the Congress must now take the lead in uniting the opposition as some of its allies, like Nitish Kumar of the JD(U), are getting impatient and with elections due in May 2024, there is no time to lose.

But the major problem the Congress faces is that some of the regional players like Mamata Banerjee (TMC) and K Chandrasekhar Rao (BRS) are vehemently opposed to including the Congress in any such alliance or at least giving it the pole position. On the other hand, another heavyweight, the AAP, is bent on charting a separate course. Having spelt out its intent in the 'Raipur Call to Action' document, the Congress must now work on getting all parties on board even if it means yielding some ground. It also has to decide whether it wants a pre-poll alliance or will wait till after the polls for, a couple of days before the plenary, the party had, recognizing ground realities, said that having a pre-poll alliance is difficult.