Samajwadi Party secretary-general Ram Gopal Yadav has asked the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to finalise the seat-sharing arrangement for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at the earliest.
“This negotiation must be conducted harmoniously for it to be effective in the elections,” he said.
The fourth meeting of the opposition alliance is scheduled to be held in Delhi on December 19.
Yadav maintained that irrespective of the recent assembly election results, caste census would remain the centerpiece of the opposition’s campaign. He also said that the Samajwadi Party-Congress dispute over assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh had been resolved.
“There is only one priority before us, to beat the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 general elections. The dominant party in various states, including Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu and the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Janata Dal (United) in Bihar and the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh should take the lead in working out the seat-sharing formula. Everyone should cooperate and we should arrive at an acceptable formula for the INDIA bloc to be an effective alternative in 2024,” Yadav said.
The INDIA bloc meeting is being convened after the Congress suffered humiliating defeats in the recent assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Leaders from other parties of the alliance are likely to focus on evolving a ‘core positive agenda’, seat sharing and a programme to hold joint rallies.
INDIA bloc parties are expected to lay out the seat-sharing roadmap and give a final shape to joint rallies and campaign programmes.
Yadav said that the parties would discuss an alternative, positive agenda to counter the BJP in the general elections. “The INDIA bloc parties should move forward with a motto to showcase unity,” he said.
The Congress has already projected ‘Main Nahin, Hum’ (Us, not I). It is to be seen whether the other parties agree to this theme, which was one of the slogans of the Congress election campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance had held its first meeting in Patna on June 23. A second meeting was held in Bengaluru on July 17-18 followed by a third meeting in Mumbai between August 31 and September 1, where the bloc of 27 parties had adopted resolutions to collectively contest the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The fourth meeting of the INDIA bloc in Delhi was earlier scheduled for December 6 but was postponed to December 19 citing the inability of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav to attend the meeting.
