Amid INDIA allies flexing their muscles, Congress set to initiate seat-sharing talks

With the BJP already leagues ahead in its preparations for the Lok Sabha polls, restive allies of the INDIA coalition are expected to begin seat-sharing negotiations this week with the Congress party, the bloc’s largest constituent, having finally completed its intra-party dialogue on state-wise alliances. Frenetic deliberations among the Opposition alliance are being chalked out throughout January with a virtual meeting of the chiefs and senior leaders of all 28 INDIA parties to finalise the bloc’s convenor, and perhaps also a chairperson, likely in two days.

Key role for Nitish Kumar

Through Tuesday (January 2), the political grapevine, particularly in Bihar, was rife with speculation that the Opposition alliance had finally agreed to name Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) president Nitish Kumar as the bloc’s convenor. Though Congress leaders in Delhi as also leaders of other INDIA constituents refused to confirm the development, leaders from the JD (U) and the RJD dropped veiled hints that a breakthrough had finally been reached – or, as one senior Bihar Congress leader told The Federal “been forced” – on the question of appointing Kumar.

KC Tyagi, chief spokesperson of the JD (U), declined to confirm reports about Kumar’s likely appointment or if a virtual meeting of the alliance leaders was finalised this week. “Talks are on, but it’s high time we go beyond talks,” Tyagi told The Federal, adding, “Nitish Kumar is the best choice for convenor as his has been the biggest contribution in bringing all parties together... it would be the right thing to name him convenor.”

Tyagi’s counterpart from the RJD, Manoj Kumar Jha, too said, “he (Kumar) is definitely among the most experienced leaders in the alliance and the RJD has always believed he would be an excellent choice for convenor”.

Efforts to cajole ‘sulking’ Nitish

The rush among INDIA partners, especially the Congress and the RJD, to keep Kumar in good honour comes in the wake of fast-paced developments within the JD (U) camp over the past week that triggered some anxiety within the Opposition alliance over the mercurial Bihar chief minister’s political moves in the immediate future. That Kumar has been sulking at the INDIA leaders not naming him convenor and, more recently, even suggesting Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s name as the alliance’s prime ministerial face, has been speculated for some time now.

However, Kumar’s recent move to take over his party’s presidency from Munger MP Rajeev Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ and the coordinated diatribe launched by his party colleagues at the Congress has made many alliance leaders wary of his next steps, given his ease at switching allegiances between the BJP and the RJD-Congress combine at politically crucial junctures.

Congress sources told The Federal that at a meeting of the party’s Bihar leaders convened by Kharge on December 26 to assess poll preparedness, the general consensus was to ensure that Kumar isn’t pushed to take “any drastic step”. It is learnt that Kharge, directly, through a senior Congress functionary and also through the RJD’s top leadership, has been in regular touch with Kumar over the week gone by, assuring him that all his concerns about the alliance, including on seat-sharing talks, will be addressed before January 15.

RJD leader and Bihar’s deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav also cancelled his scheduled January 6 to January 18 trip to Australia and New Zealand to stay put in Patna, while Manoj Jha, a key crisis manager and emissary of the RJD leadership, has also been camping in the Bihar capital.

Nitish’s grouse against Congress

Sources said the alliance’s reticence in naming him the convenor aside, Kumar’s key grouse has been that the bloc has not made any forward movement on finalising a seat-sharing blueprint. Kumar, not unlike several other INDIA partners, blames the Congress for this.

“We have had four conclaves in the past six months and now there’s talk of a virtual meeting but we are still nowhere near operationalising the alliance on the ground... where is the seat-sharing formula, where is the joint campaign? Are we an electoral alliance or just a talking shop? The BJP, which won three state elections last month, has started its Lok Sabha campaign and (Narendra) Modi is already using the upcoming Ram Mandir inauguration to further consolidate the BJP’s support but what are we doing,” a key Kumar aide told The Federal.

The Congress, which had set up a five-member National Alliance Committee to negotiate seat-sharing agreements with INDIA partners, has informed its allies that internal discussions with its state units have been completed.

“We have prepared a detailed report based on the feedback we received. We will submit the report to the Congress president on Wednesday (January 3) with details of which seats we would like to contest in each state and which ones should be fought by our allies. The Congress president will now discuss these suggestions with our allies and, of course, there will be further negotiations because what we have given is our assessment but our allies may share a different view. We will have to find the best formula to defeat the BJP... I think by January 15, you can have clarity (sic),” a member of the committee told The Federal.

Seat-sharing plans, possible hiccups

Among the formulae that the committee has recommended for seat-sharing talks are that the party must stake claim to all 52 Lok Sabha seats it had won in the 2019 polls and also on the seats where its candidates finished second behind a BJP victor, irrespective of the margin of defeat. Sources said the committee has unequivocally endorsed the need for an alliance not just in states where it has existing coalitions, such as Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Kerala (within existing partners of the UDF) but also, importantly, in Uttar Pradesh (with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD), Bengal (ideally with both the Trinamool Congress and the Left Front), Jammu and Kashmir (ideally with both, National Conference and People’s Democratic Party) and even in Delhi (with the AAP).

Of these, Congress sources said negotiating alliances in Bengal and Delhi will be the trickiest. In Bengal, although a section of the party leadership is keen to have an alliance with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the hurdles are two-fold: convincing the chief minister and her arch rivals from the Left Front to join hands and also to force the Congress’s own Bengal unit, led by Mamata-baiter Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, to fall in line. While Banerjee and the Left are unwilling to have any truck, sources say the Trinamool chief is not agreeable to sparing more than two seats to the Congress. The Grand Old Party wants to contest at least nine of the state’s 42 seats if its alliance includes the Trinamool and the Left.

Negotiations with the AAP are likely to be even more cumbersome. Congress sources confirmed to The Federal that the party’s Delhi unit, barring some leaders such as former MP Sandeep Dikshit, have grudgingly come around to the idea of having an alliance with Kejriwal’s party on the condition that the AAP stakes claim on not more than three seats (North West Delhi, South Delhi and West Delhi).

Congress’ beef with Punjab AAP a deterrent

Congress sources admitted that while the AAP may still be amenable to the seat-sharing formula in Delhi, what could derail the alliance is the emphatic no to any pact with Kejriwal’s party from the Congress’s Punjab leaders. The Congress had won eight of Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and some in the party’s central leadership believe that the party should let the AAP contest on the remaining five – a formula the Punjab Congress leaders have flatly rejected. Moreover, a section of the Congress leadership believes Kejriwal wouldn’t stop at demanding an alliance in Delhi and Punjab alone and would press for seats in Gujarat and Goa too.

Kharge, who has already assured INDIA partners that he would step in to iron out differences over seat-sharing in any state where a stalemate arises, clearly has his task cut out. There are also suggestions from quarters that in the event of Nitish being appointed the INDIA convenor, Kharge, as president of the largest party in the bloc and a potential prime ministerial face, must accept the role of the group’s chairperson, just as Sonia Gandhi helmed the now defunct UPA coalition. If the suggestion is accepted, Kharge will have to simultaneously shoulder the ominous responsibility of steering his party as well as the INDIA bloc and countering an aggressive BJP made stronger by the Hindutva hysteria that the Ayodhya Ram Mandir is sure to trigger.

Do or die moment for alliance

INDIA leaders told The Federal that the next 15 days would decide whether the alliance stays or sinks even before the Lok Sabha polls are called. “Issues like who will be the convenor or who will be the chairperson are more for optics and massaging the ego of some leaders or parties... the bigger task is an amicable agreement on seat sharing because unless that happens, everything else we talk about is meaningless,” chief of one of the INDIA constituents told The Federal.

A senior leader of another INDIA bloc party said, “we want the seat-sharing to be finalised before Rahul Gandhi goes on his Bharat Nyay Yatra (scheduled to start from Manipur on January 14) and a clear joint campaign plan to be prepared shortly thereafter... at our last meeting, there was a suggestion that our joint campaign should begin from Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on January 30 (anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom); it is imperative the alliance takes a clear shape at least two weeks earlier so that our narrative, common program, etc. can be sorted out.”