Whither Opposition Unity? Future Bleak For I.N.D.I.A Bloc As TMC & AAP Snub The Congress
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2024-01-24 13:12:37
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
In a matter of a couple of hours, the I.N.D.I.A bloc and the Congress suffered two heavy blows. After Mamata Banerjee's announcement in Kolkata earlier in the day that the TMC will contest all 42 seats in Bengal on its own and will have no truck with the Congress in the state, the AAP has now said that it will contest all 14 seats in Punjab and will not ally with the Congress in the state. With this it is now clear that Arvind Kejrwal and AAP take their cue from Mamata Banerjee as earlier too, when she had proposed Mallikarjun Kharge's name as chairperson of the I.N.D.I.A bloc, Kejriwal had seconded it with alacrity. It is most likely that AAP will not ally with the Congress in Delhi too.
What does this mean for the opposition alliance and the Congress party? Already, the unity suffered when the alliance failed to speak in one voice over the Ram Mandir issue. Also, seat-sharing talks in most states have not made much progress as in most of them the Congress is being seen as a spoilsport. In Bihar, Maharashtra, Bengal, UP, Punjab and Delhi, the allies are accusing the Congress of trying to punch much above its weight.
Although the Congress has said that it cannot imagine a national alliance without TMC or Mamata Banerjee, she has made it clear that she expects the Congress to settle for around 300 seats nationally, leaving the rest to others. She also emphasized that all regional parties were on the same page. She said that any alliance will be at national level only after the Lok Sabha elections. This shows that regional parties who are not already in alliance with the Congress (like the DMK or the JMM) are bent on protecting their turfs and getting maximum MPs in Lok Sabha from their respective states. They do not have much faith on the Congress delivering, neither in states (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal, Karnataka, Gujarat, Uttarankhand and Chhattisgarh) where it is in direct contest with the BJP and definitely not in states where the regional parties are strong. They feel that giving even a few seats to the Congress in their states will mean handing them to the BJP on a platter as given their old conflict with the Congress, these regional parties are not sure whether their voters will vote for the I.N.D.I.A bloc-nominated Congress candidate.
Another big factor is that some regional parties like the TMC are eyeing to have more MPs in Parliament than the Congress which has shown in the last two general elections that it cannot win more than 52 seats on its own. It won 44 in 2014 and 52 in 2019. This time around, with the NDA eyeing more than 400 seats, it is the Congress that is likely to suffer the worst and its tally might go below 44. TMC, if it manages to win 40 seats in Bengal, can seriously think of taking over the leadership of the opposition from the Congress. But one thing is clear though, with the TMC and the AAP not giving much importance to the Congress and with JD(U) and RJD making noises against it in Bihar, the I.N.D.I.A alliance does not appear to have a bright future before the polls. In the unexpected event of the BJP-led NDA losing the faith of the people, any alliance between the opposition parties will only happen after the polls.
