Back to square one? INDIA bloc to start fresh talks after state polls

At an impasse for over two months owing to the Congress party’s preoccupation with elections for five state Assemblies, talks within the Opposition’s INDIA coalition are likely to restart soon after the poll results are declared on December 3. However, sources cutting across INDIA constituents have told The Federal that the emergence of several flashpoints between different alliance partners since the bloc’s Mumbai conclave and a subsequent meeting of its coordination committee has created new hurdles for “any meaningful outcome at this stage”.

Though no date has been fixed as yet for the resumption of dialogue, sources said a meeting of the bloc’s coordination committee could be held around mid-December once the exercise of government formation concludes in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram. Backchannel talks among the alliance leaders, however, will resume earlier since Parliament’s winter session is scheduled to begin on December 4. The Opposition, like during earlier sessions of Parliament, wants to coordinate its floor strategy against the BJP-led treasury benches on crucial issues.

Sources in the Congress indicated to The Federal that party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, in his capacity as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, will start reaching out to chiefs of various INDIA parties soon after voting for the Telangana Assembly polls concludes, on November 30.

'Floor strategy' for winter session

A key aide of Kharge said the Rajya Sabha LoP wants to have “preliminary discussions” with leaders of like-minded parties on the Opposition’s “floor strategy and priorities” for the winter session before results for the five state Assembly polls are declared on December 3. However, these discussions “will not involve a substantive dialogue” on the affairs of the INDIA coalition, though Kharge plans to use the opportunity to “assure all allies of his and the Congress’s steadfast commitment to strengthening the alliance and resolving all pending issues at the earliest”.

The Congress is cautiously optimistic of registering major electoral gains in the poll-bound states with most political pundits unanimous in predicting imminent victories for the party in MP, Chhattisgarh and Telangana even if Rajasthan, continuing its three-decade-old tradition of voting out an incumbent government, goes the BJP way. The wider Opposition bloc too is eager to see the BJP receive a drubbing in these states, particularly since the party has fought the elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name, without projecting a chief ministerial face in any state.

Yet, sources in the INDIA bloc maintained that a rout for the BJP “provides no guarantee of brisk and smooth resolution of differences” that have remained unaddressed, or have even aggravated, within the Opposition’s alliance since the first and only meeting of its coordination committee held on September 14 at the Delhi residence of NCP chief Sharad Pawar.

“The INDIA alliance started with a lot of promise but for the past two months it has gone into a frozen frame... the headway we had made in terms of confidence and consensus building among the partners during our discussions in Patna, Bengaluru and Mumbai has been lost. We are almost back to square one and we have just four months left before the Lok Sabha polls begin,” a senior leader from a regional constituent of the alliance told The Federal.

The leader, who is also a member of the INDIA coordination committee, added, “From what we are hearing, the BJP is up for major setbacks in the Assembly polls and if that happens, we will have a solid ground to restart the INDIA talks but, in my view, if we can’t make a breakthrough on issues like seat-sharing by the end of December, the alliance will just not take off.”

Nitish's remarks

Starting off the block from its first meeting in Patna in June this year, the INDIA bloc had grown rapidly over the next two months from an initial conglomerate of 17 parties to a rainbow gathering of 27 outfits by the time it held its third conclave in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1. From a thaw in the frosty relations among several of its constituents to a seemingly coherent anti-BJP platform that promised a joint campaign on emotive issues like caste census, unemployment, price rise and so on, the bloc seemed to be going from strength to strength in its early days despite the occasional disagreements. However, the past two months have seen a swift unravelling of these gains.

The ostensibly unilateral decision of Congress’s Kamal Nath to “cancel” the first joint rally of the alliance that the bloc’s coordination panel had declared to be held in Bhopal in early October had rattled not just other INDIA partners but many within the Congress too. The coordination committee’s nod for a “boycott” of 14 news anchors by the alliance too irked several of the constituents. Nath’s gruff dismissal of any alliance with INDIA partner Samajwadi Party for the MP Assembly polls also led SP chief Akhilesh Yadav to lash out at the Congress and publicly cast doubts on the sustainability of the still-evolving coalition.

Then, last month, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who had played a key role in hotwiring the negotiations between the Congress and ‘difficult’ parties such as the Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party but failed to have himself pivoted to the role of INDIA convenor, also left the Congress embarrassed. Addressing a CPI rally in Patna, Nitish had declared that though he had wanted the Grand Old Party to be the fulcrum of Opposition unity, the GOP had “shown no such concern and is interested only in the Assembly elections”; squarely blaming the Congress for stalling any forward movement in the INDIA talks. A rattled Kharge had to make an SOS call to Nitish assuring the latter that the Congress was committed to the alliance and would be back on the talks table the moment the current round of Assembly polls conclude.

Sources told The Federal that though “infrequent and informal” discussions have taken place between INDIA leaders like Kharge, Pawar, RJD’s Lalu Yadav, the DMK’s MK Stalin and CPM’s Sitaram Yechury over the past two months, most other coalition partners have been left in the cold. Leaders of several such parties, in private conversations, blame the Congress for “deliberately slowing down the discussions” in the hope that an uptick in the GOP’s electoral fortunes in the ongoing Assembly polls would increase its bargaining power with the allies when seat-sharing negotiations finally take off.

Coordination committee to be rejigged?

There is also considerable unease, sources said, among several allies on the way the coordination committee had arrived at its decisions, particularly the one regarding boycott of anchors, during its first meeting. An INDIA bloc leader, whose party did not get representation in the coordination committee, told The Federal, “We can understand several smaller parties not getting a spot on the panel because, for whatever reason, the bigger parties decided that only 13 members will be part of it though the alliance has 27 parties but what stopped the committee from discussing the decisions with us before announcing them... at our discussions in Patna, Bangalore and Bombay, it was decided that all decisions will be taken by consensus but that was not the case when the coordination committee gave its statement”.

Some INDIA leaders The Federal spoke to also lamented that most parties in the alliance had named “second or third rung leaders” to the various committees and working groups that were formed after the Mumbai dialogue to operationalise aspects such as seat-sharing negotiations, joint campaign and communication strategy of the alliance.

Sources said that when the alliance talks resume next month, a strong pitch may be made by several parties to “either rejig the coordination committee to give better representation to all parties so that proper consultations can take place or to set up another panel comprising the chiefs of the various constituent parties to ensure that tricky issues are resolved at the highest level without delay”. A senior alliance leader from a key Hindi Heartland state told The Federal, “the alliance can’t afford to leave important negotiations to junior leaders of different parties; decisions must be taken at the highest level to avoid back and forth and it should then be left to the respective party chiefs to ensure that everyone in their organisation falls in line with whatever decision is taken or else we will still be talking when the elections are announced”.