The Coordination Committee of the Opposition Bloc INDIA will meet tomorrow; the agenda includes seat-sharing and campaigning schedules

On Wednesday, the Coordination Committee of the Opposition group INDIA is slated to convene. Topics on the agenda include seat-sharing and electoral campaigning.

Senior INDIA coalition officials including Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), KC Venugopal of the Congress, and Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray faction are members of the Coordination Committee, which is the bloc’s highest decision-making body.

The NCP President Pawar’s Delhi home would be the location of the INDIA Coordination Committee meeting.

Days after being inspired by its successes in the seven by-elections conducted earlier this month, the INDIA alliance met. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won three seats and the INDIA bloc constituents four of the seven assembly seats up for election in six states.

In order to unify all non-BJP voters in opposition to the BJP, 28 opposition parties earlier in July formed the coalition known as the Indian National Developmental Inclusive coalition (INDIA). The opposition intends to run united candidates against the BJP in order to increase winning prospects and reduce the splitting of non-BJP votes. Following a series of talks with members of the opposition, opposition leaders including Arvind Kejriwal and Nitish Kumar officially declared the alliance.

Since the bloc’s founding, its leaders have convened in Mumbai and announced the Coordination Committee, a Campaign Committee, and three further working committees. While the bloc portrays togetherness, there is uncertainty on the choice for prime minister, the seat-sharing mechanism, or a shared agenda.

Seat-sharing and a campaign are on the agenda
The Wednesday meeting of the INDIA Coordination Committee of the Opposition is expected to cover seat-sharing and election campaigns.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha said that the meeting will examine what programs needed to be done throughout the campaigns and where they would be held.

“The 13th meeting is significant; meetings of the various sub-groups, including the social media committee, campaign committee, and research committee, have all been held. These gatherings will provide their seal of approval to the discussions conducted there. The agenda will be given a final form, the programs and locations for the campaigns will all be discussed, according to Jha, a member of the Working Group for Media of the INDIA group.

According to IANS, discussions on seat-sharing, which have not yet occurred, would also come up during the negotiations.

The subject of seat distribution in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and other states would be on the leaders’ agenda, according to the source. According to the source, a thorough conversation will be had over the amount of seats that each party want to run for in these states. According to the source, there will also be debate over seat sharing in West Bengal and Maharashtra, according to IANS.

Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the chief minister of West Bengal, has already described the strategy for seat-sharing before the announcement of the establishment of the INDIA alliance.

Mamata said that the opposition should back a party wherever it is popular, citing the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress-Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in Jharkhand, and the Congress-DMK in Tamil Nadu as examples. She said that although she backs the Congress in Karnataka and other states where it is strong, the Congress ought to do the same for other local parties.

“Whoever is powerful in some location, in their territory, they should fight together in this scenario. Bengal shall we take. We [Trinamool] should fight in Bengal. AAP should fight in Delhi. They are all present in Bihar. Together, Tejashwi (RJD), Nitishji (JD-U), and Congress. The choice is theirs. I’m uncertain about their formula. They [the DMK and Congress] are friendly and may fight together in Chennai. They [JMM-Congress] are present in other states as well as Jharkhand. Thus, it is their decision, Mamata stated.

Additionally, Mamata said that she will back the party in the 200 seats in Congress where the party is dominant.

By-election wins have energized the INDIA bloc.
Four of the seven byelections held earlier this month were won by members of the INDIA group.

The findings, according to RJD MP Jha, demonstrate that an argument is already being made in favor of the opposition group.

According to Jha, who spoke to PTI, “Normally we don’t pay too much attention to bypoll results, but this time there is a party that has so much power and resources on one side, and the opposition parties have a major dearth of resources on the other. The findings demonstrate that money and influence alone won’t buy you everything.These results have created a narrative, even though the Congress only lost one seat, Baggeshwar, by a very tiny margin. If you consider Uttarakhand’s prior test results, it is nothing.

But even as the opposition rejoices over the BJP’s loss on four seats, divisions within the opposition were also on display during the byelections as rival candidates from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Congress, Left, and Samajwadi Parties (SP) vied for seats in West Bengal, Kerala, and Uttarakhand.

One of the unresolved problems that the bloc is striving to minimize is internal conflict. The division of seats and the identity of the bloc’s “face,” or leader, who would presumably run for prime minister, are still open questions. Supporters of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar have openly demanded their selection as the bloc’s leader during the course of the last year. There have also been rumors about Mamata and MK Stalin, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

Before the Coordination Committee meeting, RJD’s Jha disregarded the discussions over the bloc’s appearance.

The ‘face’ arguments are a result of the market’s neo-liberal traits and their impact on politics. “There was no face in 1977; voices against autocracy were raised; J P (Narayan) was the leader, but Morarji Desai took over as prime minister,” Jha told PTI.

Jha went on to use the year 2004 as an example, noting that despite the absence of a leader, the opposition coalition at the time established the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which Manmohan Singh was appointed to lead.

“The Shining India program failed in 2004… Was there a PM name, but Manmohan Singh, who ruled for ten years and had one of the greatest administrations, was chosen? You are not purchasing shampoo or soap, I often emphasize. Is it a good arrangement to have a party where no one is allowed to criticize the prime minister? Or is the first among equals kind of system the opposition is advocating preferable? For the people, we are presenting a progressive option, stated Jha