Congress has repeatedly failed to form anti-BJP alliances with regional parties and has endangered its existence as India’s national party for decades. Recently, the century-old party faced another setback while forming the National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (India Alliance). As the 24th Lok Sabha polls approach, there is no guarantee that the seat-sharing equation with the surviving parties in the India Alliance will be sealed at all. As a result, the organizational structure required for collective campaigning, electoral strategy, is now twenty-five years old.
Bihar-based Janata Dal (United) and West Bengal-based Trinamool Congress have officially left the opposition alliance. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced that his party will fight alone in the state and will not ally with the Congress. However, the central leadership of the party did not officially support Mane’s position. This means a total of 95 seats are already out of alliance. If Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal decides to stay away from Delhi as well, a total of 102 seats will be out of the alliance.
Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah also publicly said, “If the seat-sharing formula is not decided soon, some opposition parties may form a separate alliance.”
According to political critics, the alliance was leaderless from the start. Neither party had the larger vision to assume a leadership role in this alliance or to be motivated to sacrifice some interests for the sake of unity and solidarity. ‘We will fight without projecting a Prime Minister’—this declaration comes from hard reality, it is clear. The supremo of each party in this alliance is interested in becoming the prime minister. Because no one has any charisma or acceptance at the national level.
Most of the coalition partners are regional parties – which have established themselves fighting the Congress. An alliance with the Congress would not be the right politics for them. For one reason, the core supporters chose them instead of Congress. Two, it would give room to a weakened Congress to regain ground in their own vote bank areas. Most of these regional parties intend to expand their base beyond their state borders in the future. So while each party is eyeing the votes of the other partners, none is willing to share their core voters in their home states. That the Congress was planning to capture their votes, restore the party’s national stature and claim the prime ministership was always a palpable fear among all the alliance partners. This fear was made clear by the JD(U) after it pulled out of the alliance. The partners are openly blaming the Congress for the seat sharing. Allegations of a conspiracy to ‘hijack’ the leadership of the opposition alliance have also surfaced. The Congress has come under fire for being lax in taking forward seat-sharing talks within the coalition.
JD(U) leader KC Tyagi alleged that Nitish and Akhilesh have repeatedly questioned the delay in seat sharing talks. The Congress said there would be no seat-sharing in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Karnataka. They will let BJP win all the seats, but not give us any seats. But Bihar, UP, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu will seek seats in proportion to their strength. They want 15 seats in UP, 10 in Bihar, 20 in Maharashtra, 8 in West Bengal. They conspired to kill all our non-Congress parties. The question of survival before Congress today. Instead of survival, they expect revival. They had to make sacrifices to survive. The Congress attitude was not very positive from day one. The alliance is breaking due to stubborn attitude of Congress. There is a group within the Congress, which wants to take over the leadership of the alliance.’
On the other hand, while Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Naya Yatra’ has irked alliance partners, he has achieved nothing for his own party or alliance. By putting up a solo show even in ‘friendly’ states, the Congress has only shown its parochial attitude to coalition politics without informing the coalition ruling parties. Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, the DMK, has also publicly accused the Congress of keeping its seats in mind, ignoring the interests of its partners.
Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she had offered two seats to the Congress on the condition that they leave the Left. Congress rejected this proposal. Mamata has taken the support of the BJP as well as the Congress at various times in her political journey against the Left. Against that backdrop, Mamata cannot be expected to ally with the Left in her home state. Fighting the BJP is a political imperative for Mamata today, especially given the kind of politics she has adopted in the past few years. The Congress and the Left have long been natural allies in West Bengal. Congress has consistently lost vote percentage in the last three Lok Sabha elections. Even in the last Panchayat elections, it allied with the Left. The combined votes of the Left, Congress and Indian Secular Front (ISF) increased by 10 percent. With the next assembly elections only two years away, Mamata is reluctant to give up seats for the coalition and let them make new ground.
The Samajwadi Party (SP), the main opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, joined the alliance in a bid to win seats in other states. But their hopes have been dashed by the dismal results of the opposition, including the Congress, in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly. In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress had also hoped for a seat compromise with the SP. But without any discussion, Akhilesh announced the allocation of 11 Lok Sabha seats for the Congress. This unilateral decision disappointed the Congress. The Congress is said to have drawn up a list of 25 constituencies including Amethi, Rae Bareli, Fatehpur Sikri or Agra, Bulandshahr, Noida, Ghaziabad, Saharanpur, Kanpur and Maharajganj.
According to political analysts, Akhilesh is responding to what Congress has done in Madhya Pradesh. The Congress tried the BSP card to allot more seats to Akhilesh, but BSP chief Mayawati has announced to fight the Lok Sabha elections alone. Now Congress has no choice but to form an alliance with SP or fight alone. In the current scenario, Sonia faces a tough challenge to protect her stronghold Rae Bareli. Congress can go to any kind of talks to keep Rae Bareli. In the 19th Lok Sabha, the Congress directly contested only four seats in Uttar Pradesh – Kanpur Urban, Amethi, Rae Bareli and Fatehpur Sikri. Of these, he won in Rae Bareli but came second in three other constituencies. Congress fielded Raj Babbar as a candidate for Fatehpur Sikri seat but he lost his security. The position of Congress has worsened in the 2022 assembly. They are third after BJP and SP. In Amethi, the Congress lost four assembly constituencies and three assembly constituencies in Rae Bareli.
Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats. Here Congress is looking to form an alliance with NCP and Shiv Sena (UBT). But this idea suffered a major blow recently when Congress heavyweight Milind Deora left the Congress and joined the Shiv Sena. Milind Deora was a two-time Congress MP from South Mumbai. The NCP and Shiv Sena (UBT) are expected to claim more seats from the Congress, due to poor results in the last two Lok Sabha polls. In 2014, Congress contested 26 seats in Maharashtra and won only 2, and in 2019 it contested 25 seats and won only one seat.
13 Lok Sabha constituencies in Punjab. Congress performed poorly in two consecutive by-elections in Sangrur (lost collateral) and Jalandhar seats. For this reason, the Aam Aadmi Party is not interested in giving seats to the Congress.
Similarly, Kerala has 20 Lok Sabha seats. With the Left Front in power, the Congress is in opposition. IUML contested and won two seats in the 19th Lok Sabha. The IUML may claim more seats in Kerala, which could spell trouble for the Congress-led UDF alliance in the state. The CPI is pressuring Rahul Gandhi to give up their Wanad seat and contest from a seat in North India. In Tamil Nadu, Congress contested 9 seats in 2019 and won 8. But this time, DMK may ask Congress to fight in fewer seats. Because Congress has now lost power all over the country.
