Congress left alone as INDIA allies SP, TMC back AAP in Delhi polls

The February 5 Delhi Assembly polls have turned into an arena for shadow-boxing against the Congress party within the INDIA bloc even as the Opposition group’s supposed main ‘enemy’, the BJP, continues to sharpen its attacks against the ruling Aam Aadmi Party.

On Wednesday (January 8), a day after the Election Commission announced the schedule for the Delhi Assembly polls, AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal declared on X that INDIA constituent Trinamool Congress had announced support for his party for the upcoming elections.

With a “Thank You Didi” message for Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee, Kejriwal acknowledged that the Bengal CM had “always supported and blessed us in our good and bad times”.

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Trinamool Cong, SP endorse AAP

The Trinamool is the second INDIA bloc outfit after Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party to endorse the AAP in the high-stakes Delhi polls.

With visible anti-incumbency against its government and key leaders, including Kejriwal, facing multiple charges of corruption, the AAP, in power in Delhi since 2013, barring a 15-month period of President’s Rule, is facing its most difficult electoral contest as the BJP senses a chance to end its 26-year-long wait to wrest power in Delhi and the INDIA bloc’s largest party, the Congress, hopes for some revival after failing to win a single seat in the Assembly in the 2015 and 2020 elections.

The support that the AAP has received from the TMC and the SP, however, makes for nothing more than good optics for a beleaguered Kejriwal as neither party holds any electoral sway in Delhi. Though Delhi has pockets of Bengali and Purvanchali (people from east UP and Bihar) voters, the Trinamool and the SP have never made any serious efforts at expanding the electoral footprint of their respective parties in the national capital nor do they strike a chord with Delhi voters.

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Pulls and pressures

As such, the endorsement for the AAP from these parties has more to do with the pulls and pressures that have kept the INDIA bloc, more particularly the Congress party, uneasy since the BJP’s unexpected victories in last year’s Maharashtra and Haryana assembly polls that came within months of the saffron party suffering significant losses in the Lok Sabha polls due to a united Opposition onslaught.

The saffron tsunami that swept across Maharashtra and Haryana, or even the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, largely due to a complete decimation of the Congress party had triggered calls within the INDIA bloc to knock the Congress off from its self-anointed status as the fulcrum of the Opposition group.

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Frosty equation

The Trinamool Congress, whose frosty equation with the Congress party are widely known and had played out in full public view even before the Lok Sabha polls, has been consistently demanding that Mamata Banerjee be made the “face of the alliance”. The Trinamool brass has argued that the Congress is unable to defeat the BJP in direct electoral contests while Banerjee has had a proven record of humbling the saffron party in successive Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in her home state.

Fending off demands

While the Congress was busy fending off such demands from the Trinamool, juxtaposing its national footprint against the Trinamool’s regional status as a party limited to Bengal and some pockets of other north-eastern states, the calls for a change in leadership of the INDIA bloc gained traction; even attracting votaries from unlikely quarters. Not only did the demand of making Mamata the face of the INDIA bloc find some favour from Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) – both parties that, like the Congress, were routed in the Maharashtra polls – but even the Congress’s long-term and most strident ally, RJD chief Lalu Prasad, said the leadership baton of the alliance should pass to the Trinamool supremo.

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It is in light of these developments that had played out within the INDIA bloc in the final two months of 2024 that the Trinamool’s New Year shot of endorsing the AAP needs to be seen.

Bipolar disorder

“Irrespective of what the Congress may claim about its chances in the Delhi elections, everyone, including the Congress knows, that the Delhi elections are largely a bipolar fight between the AAP and the BJP. The Trinamool’s endorsement for the AAP won’t make any difference to the Delhi results; even voters in CR Park (a locality with sizeable Bengali population) won’t vote for AAP merely because Mamata has announced support,” political commentator Pradeep Shrivastav told The Federal.

On the edge

Shrivastav, who has covered the Congress party for over three decades, added, “The Trinamool’s declaration of support (for the AAP) is simply meant to keep the Congress on the edge and to find an ally in Kejriwal whenever the issue of leadership of the INDIA bloc comes up. So far, at least officially, there is no chairperson or even convenor of the INDIA bloc but after the Delhi polls, if this question comes up, Mamata would need allies to back her claim.”

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The SP, riding on whose back the Congress managed to win six Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh, including the Gandhi family strongholds of Rae Bareli and Amethi, last June, too has a bone to pick with the Grand Old Party. Its endorsement of the AAP, said a senior SP MP, is a “subtle nudge” to the Congress leadership to “stop taking us for granted”.

'More accommodating'

The SP, party sources said, had been hopeful that the Congress would be “more accommodating” of its expansion plans beyond UP given how “Akhilesh helped the Congress win seats in UP during the Lok Sabha polls by mobilising the entire SP cadre in the Congress’s support”. However, the ties between the two parties have been under increasing strain for the past few months, sources said.

Akhilesh was particularly miffed with the Congress’s decision of not allotting seats to his party in the Haryana polls, especially in the Yadav-dominated Ahirwal belt of the state. In a tit-for-tat move, the SP had refused to part with seats for the Congress when 10 assembly segments in Uttar Pradesh went for bypolls alongside the assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, forcing the Congress to sit out of the contest rather than face the humiliation of a complete rout by contesting solo on these seats.

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Cong makes amends

After its unexpected defeat in Haryana, the Congress’s central leadership did try to make some amends by roping the SP into a seat-sharing agreement for the Maharashtra polls but Akhilesh’s party colleagues from Maharashtra have reportedly been complaining that the SP not only got fewer seats than it deserved but also that local Congress leaders sabotaged the election of SP candidates in the few seats that the party did get as part of the INDIA bloc.

In AAP, Akhilesh has found a convenient shoulder to fire from at the Congress considering that the SP neither has anything to lose electorally in Delhi nor is betting on the wrong horse as far as its choices in the upcoming polls are concerned given that the Congress is anyway expected to fare poorly while the AAP, despite all its present challenges, remains a favourite to win the elections.