Amid reports of differences cropping up between various parties in the INDIA Bloc, the Opposition alliance has now decided to reschedule the meeting of party heads to the third week of December.
Despite many leaders of the coalition already being in Delhi for the ensuing Winter Session of Parliament, the INDIA bloc meeting, announced by Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on December 6 to strategise for the Lok Sabha 2024 polls, received a lukewarm response from several major stakeholder leaders, including West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav, and senior Janata Dal United (U) leaders.
According to sources in Congress, several key Opposition leaders will not be able to attend the meeting that was earlier scheduled on Wednesday in Delhi.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin will not be able to come to Delhi as several areas of the State have been badly hit by Cyclone Michaung. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will not be able to make it to the national Capital owing to his illness. Similarly, West Bengal Mamata Banerjee would have given it a miss owing to a wedding in her family.
While Mamata claimed that she would go ahead with her state programmes as she was not aware of the meeting call, Akhilesh said if the behaviour of the Congress had been different in one of the States where polls were conducted recently, it too would have seen a change.
Akhilesh had accused the Congress of betraying the SP by not giving it tickets to contest in a potential alliance with the Congress in MP.
“I don’t know, I have no information so I kept a programme in North Bengal... If we had the information, we wouldn’t have scheduled those programmes. We would have definitely gone (for the meeting), but we have not received any information,” the TMC chief said on Monday.
“I will be busy in my State (Jharkhand). I spoke to Kharge, maybe a representative from our side will go,” Soren told the media in Ranchi.
Seat sharing for the Lok Sabha polls, which are just four months away, is likely to be at the top of the agenda of the meeting. The next INDIA Bloc meeting would also be crucial for the Congress, particularly as the party lost Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, the Hindi heartland States that send a large number of members to Parliament.
INDIA or ‘Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’ is a group of 26 Opposition parties, including the Congress. The parties have come together to take on the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which is led by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and prevent it from winning a third straight term at the Centre in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The first meeting of the joint Opposition was convened in Patna on June 23 and the second meeting was held in Bengaluru on July 17-18. The third meeting happened in Mumbai during August 31-September 1.
In the Mumbai meeting, the Opposition parties adopted resolutions to collectively contest the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections while announcing that seat-sharing arrangements would be finalized as soon as possible through a spirit of give-and-take. The theme they have chosen for the elections is “Judega Bharat, Jeetega India” (India will unite, India will win) to take on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government.
SP leader Ramgopal Yadav said his party will attend the meeting although Akhilesh may not be present as he is busy with some events in the Purvanchal region.
Later during the day at the TV programme, Akhilesh said, “Today’s win could be the message of BJP’s defeat tomorrow. All the channels and newspapers say that people’s mood was for change. The result of these elections indicates people want a change and if so, why will the people not want a change when the elections for Delhi are held.”
On his party’s dismal showing in Madhya Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party president said, “There is party organisation only in some districts (of Madhya Pradesh) where we were seeking to contest on some seats. When the Congress did not keep us with them, we had to fight to save our party. What was wrong with that?”