Congress Postpones India Alliance Meeting Following Top Leaders' Refusal to Attend

 

New Delhi: Sources told NDTV this afternoon that the opposition bloc in India has rescheduled its meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Delhi tomorrow. The meeting will now take place "at a date convenient to all," as announced by Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday, amid his party's crushing defeat in three state elections.

The Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar both intended to skip the meeting, sources told NDTV, prompting the postponement. Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of Bengal, announced on Monday that she would not be there as well. All three are prominent members of a group meant to bring the opposition together in order to fight the BJP in the state elections in November and the Lok Sabha election the following year, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to run for an unprecedented third consecutive term.

A coordination meeting of Parliamentary Party leaders of India Alliance will be at 6 pm on December 6th, 2023 at the residence of Congress President Sh. Mallikarjun Kharge.

Thereafter meeting of Party Presidents/ Heads of the India Alliance will be scheduled in third week of…

— Gurdeep Singh Sappal (@gurdeepsappal) December 5, 2023

According to sources, senior INDIA leaders Mr. Kumar, Mr. Yadav, and Ms. Banerjee were not the only ones who backed out of the meeting on Wednesday. According to reports, MK Stalin, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, had also declared he would not attend the meeting; in his case, the state is experiencing flooding as a result of Cyclone Michaung.

A wide range of leaders have responded negatively to the Congress's invitation, highlighting the widening divide within the INDIA bloc as local parties continue to complain louder and louder about the national party and maintain that it will fight elections as the majority partner or on its own in every case.

This week, Akhilesh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee both emphasised how the Congress could have won or at least narrowed the margin of its defeats in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan if it had consented to share seats. This was a reference to the ongoing dispute over the distribution of six Madhya Pradesh seats between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party.

"... we suggested seat-sharing (but) they (the Congress) lost because of division of votes," said Ms Banerjee. Reminding the Congress that "we started on the point that we have to support parties in regions (in which) they are strong," Mr. Yadav appeared to be a little kinder to his detractors.

Sources: Nitish and Akhilesh will withdraw from the India meet.

Akhilesh Yadav, the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, was expected to send his uncle, Ramgopal Yadav, while Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar was expected to send party President Rajiv Ranjan, according to sources who spoke with NDTV earlier today.

According to sources, Mr. Yadav may have felt that it was better for him to distance himself from the meeting and that he preferred the Congress's top brass to get in touch with him.

Sources added, however, that the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the other half of the Bihar government, would have been represented by a number of its leading figures, including Lalu Prasad Yadav, the party's patriarch.

Ms. Banerjee stated on Monday that she had prior obligations. "I am not conscious of this meeting. I've planned a seven-day programme in north Bengal; if I had known beforehand, I would have taken it."

According to sources, there may not have been a single Trinamool representative in her case.

The Congress appeared to take a step back after the Bengal leader's "not aware" remark; Jairam Ramesh, the party leader, referred to the gathering on December 6 as a "informal meet". This afternoon, sources told NDTV that a "formal meeting" has been scheduled for December 18 or 19. That phrase was used once more.

In the run-up to last month's Assembly polls, allies of the Congress have been criticising it for more than just seat-sharing disputes; they have also been criticising it for insisting that the planning for the general election of the following year, which is the main reason the INDIA bloc was formed, be delayed until it is free to take the lead.

This month, most likely, is when the Congress will call the next INDIA meeting, which was held in Mumbai at the end of August. Nitish Kumar, who claimed he had been "... pushing them forward in (the) INDIA alliance but, of late, there has not been much progress," poked fun at him for failing to comply.