INDIA bloc meet: Why Kharge refused to be PM candidate, and other key takeaways

What made headlines about the meeting wasn’t the sum of the over three-hour-long discussions among the 28 parties or their future course of action. Instead, it was the surprise suggestion from Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and its endorsement by Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal to project Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the INDIA bloc’s PrimeMinister face for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – and Kharge’s non-committal stance to the proposal – that, predictably, drew the spotlight.

INDIA leaders present at the meeting, however, told The Federal that barring a few ramblings, which were on “expected lines”, the takeaways from the conclave were “in a sense, more substantial than our previous dialogues even if there were no major announcements like the ones we made after our Patna, Bangalore and Bombay meetings”.

The question of who should be nominated as the PM candidate of the bloc, incidentally, took up “fewer than 15 minutes of the meeting,” a senior Congress leader who was present at Hotel Ashoka, the conclave’s venue, said.

TR Baalu and Nitish Kumar spar over Hindi

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MP Mahua Majhi, who attended the meeting, told The Federal: “There was visibly a greater commitment this time to ensuring the success of the alliance and we spent a bulk of the time discussing the urgency for finalising state-wise seat sharing agreements and what the modalities for doing so should be... barring some harsh remarks, which are to be expected when so many parties sit together, the discussion was very cordial and I think we made some headway.”

Majhi added that “though no deadlines were set for concluding the alliance talks, everyone agreed that we have to finalise seat-sharing talks within three weeks and, by end of January, our joint campaign should take off”.

Sources said the meeting was marred by an unexpected outburst directed at the DMK’s TR Baalu by JDU’s Nitish Kumar when the former asked for English translation of the Bihar chief minister’s comment (Kumar is learnt to have stopped RJD MP Manoj Jha from translating his remarks and remark that the DMK leader should learn “our national language, Hindi”).

However, a short while later, Kumar, along with RJD’s Lalu Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav, backed the idea of launching the INDIA bloc’s joint campaign with a rally at Patna’s iconic Gandhi Maidan on January 30, the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

Kharge, who briefed the media after the conclave concluded, did not announce the date or venue of the joint INDIA rally (sources said this was to save the alliance from any embarrassment in the event of the January 30 rally being rescheduled) but said that at least “8 to 10 joint rallies will be planned soon”.

Pacifying Akhilesh

A senior INDIA bloc leader said the other major development at the meeting was the “consensus on the need for chiefs of various constituent parties of the alliance to be directly involved with the seat-sharing talks, instead of leaving the job to a committee”.

Shortly before the meeting began, Kharge constituted a five-member National Alliance Committee comprising Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel, Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khurshid and Mohan Prakash to negotiate seat-sharing deals with INDIA partners. Sources said Kharge told the alliance leaders at the meeting that while this committee, along with Congress’ senior leaders in different states, will have “preliminary discussions with the respective INDIA partners in each state, my doors will always stay open to all of you if and when there is a hurdle in the talks”.

It was subsequently decided that though no formal committee or secretariat of chiefs of INDIA bloc parties will be set up, “all party chiefs will supervise the seat-sharing talks in their respective states and regularly confer with each other to ensure that the negotiations conclude latest by January-end”.

Kharge also assured Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and Ramgopal Yadav, who enquired if the Congress wanted to rope Mayawati into the INDIA bloc and said that if this was the case then the Samajwadi Party would “go solo in Uttar Pradesh”, that “there is no discussion with BSP” about it joining the INDIA bloc and that the Yadav duo must not “believe in every rumour printed in the media”.

The Congress president is learnt to have also told Akhilesh to “forgive and forget” the rebuff that came his way from Congress’s Kamal Nath during the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls and said: “If you need to discuss anything about our position on the alliance or about any rumour you have heard about us, you can call me directly any time.”

Questions over EVMs

The discussions also saw the issue of EVM manipulations making a comeback to the coalition’s agenda. Several alliance partners advised the Congress to be cautious on how it frames its objections to the EVMs, given that the party had won three Asembly polls in the past year (Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana; the Telangana triumph coinciding with the Congress rout in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan).

It was then decided that the resolution adopted by the alliance – the only one at the Delhi conclave – would not call for discontinuation of EVMs but state the Election Commission’s reluctance to even meet an INDIA delegation to discuss its “specific questions on the design and operation of the EVMs”. The resolution, thus, offered a suggestion to the EC, stating that “instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it should be handed over to the voter who shall then place it in a separate box after having verified his or her choice” and that “100 percent counting of VVPAT slips” should be done.

The alliance, as Kharge informed the media, also decided to hold nationwide joint protests on December 22 against the mass suspension of INDIA bloc MPs from Parliament during the ongoing winter session and the stubborn refusal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah to make a statement in Parliament over the December 13 security breach.

Congress MP Syed Naseer Hussain, who was also present at the INDIA conclave, told The Federal that while these issues formed “substantial part of our discussions, there was only a brief discussion on the issue of who our PM face should be.”

Hussain said: “Mamata Banerjee proposed it suddenly and Kejriwal backed it, with both saying a Dalit PM face for the alliance would be a game changer but the Congress president immediately stepped in and said he had never flaunted his Dalit identity for political gains and the question of the PM face should be answered once the INDIA bloc fights unitedly and succeeds in defeating the BJP”.

Kharge’s stature

Confirming Hussain’s version of the discussion, RJD’s Manoj Jha told The Federal: “I think Kharge ji handled the situation like a statesman... He had a one-line answer: Bakr Id mei jiyenge to Muharram mei nachenge (a line Kharge has used often even when confronted with questions on who the Congress would project as chief minister in any poll-bound state) to suggest that these issues will be relevant only if we win... I am not saying that we will or will not project a PM face but there is a strong view among various partners that projecting a PM face right away would present its own complications which I do not want to list out.”

Congress insiders say there was possibly another reason for Kharge putting a prompt end to talk of him being projected as the PM face besides the obvious expectation of such an announcement allowing the BJP to target him both, through “central probe agencies and malicious social media campaigns”.

A section of Congress leaders believes that Banerjee’s sudden declaration of support for Kharge and Kejriwal’s move to second it “could not be taken at face value” as the two were not known to be reliable allies of the party and “may have had their own agenda”.

“Any smart politician will always weigh the pros and cons... you don’t just jump at an opportunity, no matter how lucrative it may seem and the Congress president was right in taking the stand he did... this is an alliance that is still taking shape; our decisions can’t be arbitrary because we have to take everyone along. No one doubts the capability of Kharge ji and as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha he has earned the trust of all INDIA party leaders but still, if he has to lead the alliance, it has to be through consensus,” a Congress leader close to Kharge told The Federal.

The leader added: “If such an announcement has to be made, it will be made after due consultations and at a time that is unanimously decided by all parties, the Congress included... Sonia Gandhi had also said last month (during a function to release a book commemorating Kharge’s 50-year political journey) that Khargeji has her full support to lead the Congress in the 2024 polls but even she refrained from saying he will also lead INDIA bloc’s campaign”.

Another INDIA bloc MP said: “Kharge is an excellent choice and, if you closely observe our alliance talks, there has been a gradual projection of him as the leader of INDIA bloc but a formal announcement to this effect, if at all it has to be made, must be made at the right time and I don’t think we should make such an announcement before we are absolutely sure of the final shape of our alliance.”