Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 2: With the Samajwadi Party unilaterally announcing it will contest 65 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar blaming the Congress for the lack of progress in preparing for the 2024 parliamentary elections, questions have been raised on Thursday about the opposition parties forging an united front against the BJP under the INDIA umbrella.
The speculations about the future of the INDIA bloc ramped up after Nitish Kumar, who was one of the architects in bringing the opposition parties together, said the Congress – one of the group’s biggest members and assigned the “leading role” was preoccupied with state polls; party-ruled Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh vote this month, as do Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Mizoram.
The Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who recently had a bitter exchange of words with the Congress leaders in MP over seat-sharing in this month’s state Assembly elections, announced that his party would contest 65 of UP’s 80 seats in the Lok Sabha and only the remaining 15 seats would be divided between the Congress and other INDIA members. The SP sources said it was not just mere threats but the SP has nearly finalised the list of the potential candidates.
In an apparent swipe at the INDIA bloc, the SP sources also said the party was ready to fight the BJP on its own should the opposition’s attempt at a united front fail.
Even though the Congress and other opposition parties had been almost down and out in UP, but considering the politically important stature of UP, it was unlikely that the Congress and other INDIA bloc members would agree with only 15 seats, particularly that even the performance of the SP in its home state was none too heart-warming.
Addressing a Communist Party of India rally in Patna on Thursday, Nitish Kumar remarked with a chuckle, “We have been speaking to them… pushing them forward in INDIA alliance. But, of late, there has not been much progress on that front. The Congress seems to be more interested in the five assembly polls.”
“We agreed to assign Congress the leading role. But it appears they will call the next meeting only after they are through with the state elections,” the Janata Dal (United) leader said. The last meet of the INDIA group was on August 31-September 1 in Mumbai, after which it was announced the Congress would set the next dates. There was talk it may be in Delhi but no news has emerged since. There was also buzz it would be in Madhya Pradesh but that too did not happen.
Nitish Kumar is widely seen as one of the founding members of the INDIA bloc; in fact, it was the Bihar Chief Minister who sounded out senior opposition leaders on the prospect of uniting to defeat the ruling BJP using his seniority to act as an intermediary between them and the Congress.
Mr Kumar met Congress boss Mallikarjun Kharge and top leader Rahul Gandhi in May, after which he criss-crossed the country, meeting top leaders, including those like West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who have difficult relationships with the Congress, but came into the INDIA fold anyway.
The first meeting of the INDIA bloc was held in Patna in June, at which Mr Kumar once again had to play peace-maker; this was after the Aam Aadmi Party threatened to boycott the meeting because the Congress had not backed its campaign against the Delhi administrative services ordinance.
Nitish Kumar’s comment also comes after a squabble between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party over seat-sharing for the Madhya Pradesh election. Akhilesh Yadav claimed an agreement that his party would contest six seats was ignored. “If I knew, we wouldn’t have spoken to Congress,” he had said. Later, however, Mr Yadav downplayed the fight, saying that he remained a part of the INDIA group.
