INDIA Bloc shows signs of crack as Congress loses trust, falters in coalition duties

The weak link

Sources in INDIA Bloc suggest that the Congress’s inability to build on its electoral gains of the Lok Sabha polls, highlighted by its disastrous poll drubbing in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu region over the past two months, has helped Modi’s BJP regain the political heft and aggression that had been severely dented in June.

Further, many INDIA constituents and even leaders within the Congress believe that Leader of Opposition (Lok Sabha) Rahul Gandhi’s “obsession” with “attacking Modi every other day over his links to (businessman) Gautam Adani” is allowing the BJP to “escape unchallenged over its failures on multiple fronts” that either are directly connected with the common man or better serve the political need of various Opposition parties.

TMC rebels, wants Mamata as INDIA face

Since the start of Parliament’s winter session, this schism has only been widening within the Opposition group. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which was the bloc’s only constituent that refused to enter into any seat-sharing agreement with the Congress party during the Lok Sabha polls, has, according to sources in INDIA bloc, “practically left the group” and stayed out of all meetings of Opposition floor leaders that Congress president and Leader of Opposition (Rajya Sabha) Mallikarjun Kharge convenes ahead of Parliament’s sitting every day to coordinate floor strategy.

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After the BJP’s massive electoral victories in Haryana and Maharashtra, multiple leaders from TMC had publicly slammed the Congress for its inability to defeat the saffron party in direct electoral contests. Over the past week, the Trinamool has stepped up its attacks on the Congress with senior party MPs like Kalyan Banerjee and Kirti Azad asserting that the Congress must step aside as the principal pivot of the INDIA bloc and concede that pedestal to Banerjee.

Mercurial Mamata a difficult ally

Trinamool sources said Mamata has also “not taken kindly” to the “arrogant manner” in which Congress communication wing chief Jairam Ramesh and Virudhunagar MP Manickam Tagore, a close Rahul aide, brushed aside the Trinamool’s suggestion of making her the “face of the INDIA bloc”. Tagore had recently dubbed the suggestion “a joke” while Ramesh, asked about the Trinamool’s viability as the INDIA bloc’s potential fulcrum in the aftermath of the Congress’s rout in Maharashtra, had said, “as far as I know, in both these states (Maharashtra and Jharkhand), they have no stake”.

The Trinamool was always a difficult ally to deal with not just for the Congress but also other INDIA partners. A senior non-Congress INDIA bloc leader recalled how “even when things were going smoothly and the alliance was taking shape around common ideas and not parties in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections”, Mamata often disagreed over the agenda the group must pursue.

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The leader quoted above, a Rajya Sabha MP, said, “It’s only in our imagination that Trinamool is still with the INDIA bloc... in fact, they never were... Mamata di didn’t even support the idea of a caste census over which all other INDIA parties were unanimous, she always had some or the other objection, be it on caste census or on Nitish Kumar being made convenor, or on the importance being given to the Left by the Congress... now her MPs don’t even attend INDIA meetings convened by Khargeji.”

Trust deficit ail allies

It isn’t, however, just the mercurial Mamata who is giving the Congress, the largest constituent of the INDIA bloc, daily migraines. Discordant notes are being struck by other allies too.

Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which had entered into a limited seat-sharing agreement with the Congress during the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat, has made it clear that it will not revive the alliance for the upcoming Delhi Assembly polls even though its Rajya Sabha MP, Raghav Chaddha, regularly attends INDIA bloc meetings called by Kharge in Parliament.

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The AAP’s decision to go solo in Delhi was used by Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-UBT in an editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamna as a stick to beat the Congress with. A recent Saamna editorial, which squarely placed the responsibility on the Congress for keeping the alliance united, came at a time when the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (as the alliance of INDIA partners Congress, NCP-SP and SS-UBT is called in Maharashtra) unexpected electoral rout in Maharashtra has led to calls by members of Thackeray’s party to end its alliance with the Congress and return to the party’s Hindutva pitch with renewed zeal.

Rahul’s ‘Adani obsession’ find fewer takers

Sources said that in just the past week of Parliament’s ongoing winter session, there have been several points of divergence between Congress and its allies regarding the INDIA bloc’s strategy for taking on the BJP. For the last two days, the Samajwadi Party (SP), has joined the Trinamool in keeping away from the anti-Adani protests that the Congress spearheads at Parliament’s Makar Dwar in the morning before the day’s proceedings commence in both Houses.

“The Congress is stuck on the Adani issue. For Rahul Gandhi, every discussion begins and ends with how we must collectively corner the government on various issues linked with Adani. The Congress doesn’t seem to understand that its allies are all regional parties for whom issues specific to their states are more important than Adani. Can you expect the Samajwadi Party to give Adani priority over what is happening to Muslims in places like Sambhal or Mamata Banerjee to forget the issues of financial dues owed by the Centre to Bengal because Congress can’t look beyond Adani,” a Lok Sabha MP from Akhilesh Yadav’s SP told The Federal.

Who will bell the cat?

A section of Congress’s Lok Sabha MPs, particularly the few who got elected from the Hindi heartland states, also believe that Rahul’s “stubborn refusal” to put the Adani issue on the backburner “despite knowing that the government will never agree to a debate on Adani” has brought the Congress and the INDIA bloc at a crossroad.

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“For us (Congress MPs), the hurdle is telling Rahul that his strategy is wrong...some of us have, in fact, been urging our allies to convince the Congress president that at least in Parliament we need a multi-pronged attack strategy...in public, Rahul can keep harping on Adani but in Parliament, where we now have the numbers to compel a discussion on some if not all issues, why are we not doing it,” a senior Congress MP said.

Federal issues are important too, say allies

The Congress MP added, “DMK and Left parties had also told Kharge that while they support the Congress’s demand for a JPC probe into the Adani issue and discussion on (ongoing ethnic violence in) Manipur, these alone can’t be issues on which INDIA bloc demands answers from the Centre. There are more urgent issues; matters specific to different states or even issues of national concern like unemployment and agrarian distress, that the INDIA bloc must focus on and our leadership needs to understand this.”

Sources said Rahul’s “failure to directly communicate” with top leaders of various INDIA bloc parties on matters directly concerning the Opposition in Parliament despite now being the LoP in the Lok Sabha has also triggered some unease. The latest example of this is the simmering discontent within INDIA bloc parties, except the Congress and the DMK, over seating arrangements for Opposition MPs in the Lower House.

Rahul’s inability to communicate

As per the rules, the seating arrangement for Opposition MPs in the Lok Sabha is decided by the Speaker in consultation with the LoP. The front rows of the first block on the Speaker left side, which directly faces the block in which the prime minister and his senior-most ministers in the government are seated in the Lok Sabha, is expectedly the most coveted in this exercise.

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The inaugural session of the current Lok Sabha, which was followed in quick succession by the budget session, had seen SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, DMK’s TR Baalu and SP’s Ayodhya MP Awadesh Prasad share the front row with Rahul. While the seating arrangements were finalised only in the current session, sources said the SP chief had expected that Rahul would continue with a similar, if not the same, arrangement as the previous sessions.

Row over seating arrangement

However, the SP chief’s seat was shifted to the seventh block, adjoining the one that seats Rahul and Ballu, when the seating arrangements were finalised. Though Akhilesh, leader of the second largest Opposition party in the Lok Sabha, retains a front row seat, sources close to him say he is “unhappy” with being shifted out of the coveted eighth block. Several INDIA bloc MPs told The Federal that Rahul’s inputs on seat allocation were “in total disregard of the niceties of coalition politics”.

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Even Congress MPs who are senior members compared to Rahul aides, such as deputy leader Gaurav Gogoi and Alappuzha MP KC Venugopal, who have been given a seat in the front rows of the eighth block, have been complaining about their seniority being disregarded in seat allocation.

The Modi government is only in the second quarter of its third consecutive term and the INDIA bloc has the challenge of keeping itself united against the BJP for the next four and a half years. With something as seemingly trivial as seat allocation in the Lok Sabha becoming a contentious issue within the Opposition group, the road ahead looks bumpy. Kharge and Rahul, as LoPs in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha, respectively, and leaders of the largest INDIA bloc constituent, have their task cut out.