Fourth Meeting of the India BLOC: Elusive Consensus
Asia News Agency
The fourth meeting of the INDIA bloc in Delhi was attended by 28 parties. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee proposed Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the prime minister face of the alliance. Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Admi Party (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal endorsed the suggestion.
When Ms Bannerjee said ‘He can be India’s first Dalit Prime Minister,’ Kharge asserted that he had never used his Dalit identity. He also said the decision on prime ministerial candidate would be taken after the election.
The INDIA formation consciously side-stepped Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s proposal to project Congress president Mallijkarjun Kharge as a rival to Narendra Modi in the battle for 2024, and decided to prioritise seat-sharing and electoral strategy over the next few weeks.
Kharge himself shoots down the idea
Kharge himself shot down the idea because the projection of a candidate for the Prime Minister’s post has never been approved by the alliance partners in principle. At the news conference after Tuesday’s INDIA meet, Kharge responded to the leadership question, saying: ‘Who would be the Prime Minister is not our concern at this stage. The concern is how to win. If we don’t have enough MPs, the debate on the Prime Minister’s post becomes irrelevant. There is no point talking about the Prime Minister candidate. Modi has developed exceptional arrogance, presuming that only he can rule this country and we have to defeat him first.’
Even the Congress, writes Sanjay K. Jha of The Telegraph “doesn’t want the political battle to be reduced to a personality clash between Narendra Modi and someone else; the dominant belief in the party is that Modi should be countered and cornered on a bunch of critical issues that have cropped up over the last two terms that he has been in power.”
Overriding concern: seat-sharing
The overriding concern at the meeting “was doubtless the critical issue of seat-sharing; some parties wanted this process to be over by the year-end. But others saw it as an unreasonable deadline and it was decided to complete the process within the next 20 days. State-wise negotiations between key stakeholders will be conducted mutually and a national-level meeting of partners will happen only to sort out complicated matters.”
The meeting saw an in-principle agreement that a group of top leaders from the Congress, Trinamool, DMK, AAP, JD(U), RJD, Shiv Sena, NCP, CPI(M), JMM and the RJD would oversee the seat-sharing between the INDIA constituents.
Sources said the Trinamool Congress stressed that while regional players would support the Congress in over 300 Lok Sabha seats, it [the Congress] should take a back seat in States like Uttar Pradesh, where Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) should take the lead, Punjab and Delhi and West Bengal.
Future is unclear: While there was a general agreement that the seat-sharing process should be completed by the year-end, the future is unclear. Samajwadi leader Ram Gopal Yadav made it clear that his party would quit INDIA if there was a proposal to accommodate the Bahujan Samaj Party. As Mamata pitched for a year-end deadline, there was no indication from her of wanting to forge a broader alliance involving the TMC, the Left Front and the Congress. Given the mutual antagonism on the ground, Radhika Ramaseshan (Senior Journalist) writes “it seems unlikely the idea would take off. In Maharashtra, it appears that while Uddhav’s Sena and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party have their terrain mapped out, the Congress is in a quandary over its strong areas, if indeed there are any.
“At the core of the predicament faced by INDIA is the Congress’ inability to mould itself into the leader of an admittedly heterogeneous formation, struggling for a helmsman and a narrative. While everybody conceded the need for a shared agenda and holding collective meetings that didn’t seem unwieldy, the question is: Who will hold the baton for INDIA?”
Consensus eludes INDIA
Since its inception in June, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), comprising 28 parties, has envisaged roping in as many Opposition forces as it can mobilise in a joint front to fight the BJP in the 2024 General Election. The formation of the bloc, in which the Congress is as important an investor as the regional parties, writes Ramaseshan “was an admission on the part of the Gandhis that their political legacy was no longer remarkable enough to take on the BJP single-handedly. The series of meetings INDIA held iterated the Congress’s position as an equal and not a first among equals.
"Ideally, recent events ought to have underscored the need for such a front even more deeply, especially for the Congress, because the favourable atmospherics that prevailed during INDIA’s first congregation at Patna had dissipated. With 2023 nearing its end, the scenario has turned depressing for the Opposition. The BJP swept the elections in three states in the Hindi heartland in a direct faceoff with the Congress…… In the ongoing winter session of Parliament, the BJP has reasserted its near-hegemonic position amid projections of a comeback in 2024. It has pulverised the Opposition……”
In the circumstance, constituents of INDIA met in New Delhi on December 19, apparently to clear the air of disunity that had begun to cloud the coalition after its earlier sessions and following the differences over seat-sharing. A sense of cooperation and consensus among the parties however, “continued to be elusive. It still isn’t clear if the participants were out to score an own-goal by flagging issues that were earlier deemed as ‘irrelevant’ or quite happy to articulate their contradictions.”
Mere poll arithmetic not enough for INDIA
And even as the INDIA bloc leaders gathered in New Delhi Tuesday, Mitali Gautam (author at The Statesman) writes “the echoes of unity were met with the daunting realisation that arithmetic alone may not be their magic wand. That arithmetic hinges on an attempt to consolidate anti-BJP votes…..
“The alliance hopes to prevent the fragmentation of anti-BJP votes. Yet, a closer look at recent and past state elections reveals the complexity of this challenge…..Even in states where alliances were formed, such as Jharkhand, the BJP emerged victorious….” Also, the BJP has a formidable vote share. In 2019, the NDA’s vote share was a robust 45 per cent, with the BJP alone commanding nearly 38 per cent.”
Such a dominant position in India’s multi-party system, according to Gautam “presents a substantial challenge for opponents. The INDIA bloc’s reference to the 2004 elections, where the UPA managed to defeat the NDA, is met with scepticism. The INDIA bloc, for victory, must envisage a scenario where the BJP’s vote share undergoes a drastic fall…..
“The required drastic fall in the BJP’s vote share is predicated on two key trends ~ a mass movement against the regime involving its base and a rebellion within the ruling party. While the Modi regime has encountered various movements, they have often remained confined to specific demographics and have not significantly impacted the BJP’s core base. Moreover, there is no discernible internal rebellion within BJP ranks, a crucial factor in historical defeats. As the INDIA bloc leaders discuss seat sharing and other pertinent issues, the path to victory becomes clearer and yet more elusive.”
