INDIA alliance and opposition bloc has taken birth before 2024 general elections with the negative politics as its aim that was to defeat Modi in the Lok Sabha elections of that year .But the INDI bloc miserably failed to checkmate and defeat Modi juggernaut .This INDI alliance has no policy and no strategy except to defeat Modi and his BJP.INDIA bloc has turned into a very strange alliance where its partners are busy in opposing and fighting each her as was obviously seen in the recently held Delhi polls.Both Congress and AAP are the partners in INDIA bloc but they fought the crucial Delhi polls separately which is the negation of alliance dharma.
Congress decided to go alone in Delhi elections and fielded its candidates against AAP contestants with the result AAP’s share of votes decreased and it failed to defeat mighty BJP and in the just concluded Delhi polls BJP was successful with flying colors and it won significant 48 assembly seats and AAP had to content with mere 22 seats which is much short of the magic figure of 36 seats which are needed to form government .In fact Congress could not even open its score and it won zero seats which is big humiliation for the grand old party.AAP failed to win good number of assembly seats as congress has divided the votes of AAP and Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders of the AAP are openly saying that their defeat in polls is squarely due to the division of their vote share and this distribution of votes helped BJP to win maximum of seats.
The election results and the message of Delhi struck the INDIA alliance as the partners which are at war and friction with each other ,now aggressively showed the fissures in the INDIA alliance .In Punjab there are intense infighting between the two constituents of the INDIA bloc as the Congress has claimed that 30 of the AAP ,MLA’s are in touch with the grand party and they are about to desert AAP in Punjab. Thus the existence and survival of the AAP government of Bagwant Maan is at stake. There are fissures from Delhi to Punjab and Punjab to Maharashtra and to West Bengal in INDIA alliance and all this suggests that the ship of INDIA alliance is about to sink.
INDIA bloc will sink under its own weight as is obvious from the widening fissures in INDIA bloc at pan India level and this is very sad for the future of INDIA as this opportunistic, selfish and negative alliance will soon or later disintegrate and such a day will be doomsday for the whole opposition. In fact amid fissures in INDIA bloc unity ,congress leaders speak in different voices which is not good for the health of the opposition alliance. In west Bengal the chief minister Mamata Banerjee talks in different way which shows that all is not well for the INDIA bloc. The defeat of the two INDIA bloc partners which is demoralizing has led to the open contradictions among the congress leaders who seem not on the same page so far as the its alliance strategies is concerned. Some of the leaders of congress defended the party’s position and were of the opinion that AAP was unwilling to forge an alliance in the assembly polls, while a good number of its leaders differed with the view calling for introspection and coherent political strategy. Congress leaders openly asserted that the INDIA bloc was constituted especially for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and in the different state elections ,there are state specific issues and so alliance in state elections is neither needed nor feasible and so the alliance partners can go all alone in the state assembly polls. Congress MP and whip in the LoK Sabha Manickam Tagore said that INDIA bloc was formed for general elections 2024 .
In different states ,different strategies were evolved in those polls also. The AAP and congress had an alliance in past but not in recent Delhi polls ,but there was no such alliance in Punjab. INDIA bloc’s future is in balance as Delhi assembly results expose deep fissures in the opposition alliance.PM Modi criticized AAP’s collapse as congress failed to win even one single seat. He questioned the opposition unity ahead of Bihar polls. It is pertinent to mention that entire INDIA alliance leaders landed in Delhi ,while they stopped congress ,they could not save APP.SP and TMC leaders campaigned for AAP candidates and not for congress. Congress won no seats ,but AAP’s tally was far less than it won in 2020 Delhi polls.AAP won only 22 assembly seats. It led to consternation in the INDIA bloc, especially because the congress spoilt AAP’s chances in 12 states. J&K chief minister of NC which is a partners of the INDIA bloc has rightly exclaimed ‘Aur lado aapas mein !!!.D Raja of communist party said that the Delhi election results is a wakeup call to the constituents’ of INDIA bloc especially for congress and dominant regional parties in various states. He further asserted that unity between the alliance partners should be both ideological as well as practical. Sanjay Rawt of the Shiv Sena –UBT said had the AAP and congress fought the polls jointly ,the results would have been completely different.
Bihar is going to polls in November 2025,and it will be seen how the constituents’ of grand alliance such as Left Front, Congress and RJD will behave in those elections as in all likelihood RJD which is a dominant force in Bihar will go for bargaining with congress and will like to contest from many more seats and leave less seats for congress. In all probability perhaps they cannot checkmate JD-U and NDA alliance in Bihar polls all this because there seems no unity between the various constituents of the Mahaghatbandhan. The Delhi poll results can influence the parliamentary behavior of the opposition parties as SP and TMC had indicated that they would not follow the congress strategy in parliament and will act as an independent pressure group of regional parties.TMC recently did not cooperate with the opposition alliance created pandemonium in parliament as it wanted to raise the issues of West Bengal in parliament ,but the continuous blockage of the parliamentary proceedings because of the obdurate attitude of the opposition alliance has not allowed Mamta’s TMC MP’s to raise the pressing issues of the West Bengal in parliament.
This clearly shows the widening rift between the various constituents of opposition alliance. Mamata Banerjee –led party wanted the parliament to function so as it can raise the issues of the people of the West Bengal. But that did not happen and the stalemate in the parliament continued. The debacle of the three constituents of INDIA bloc in recently held assembly elections has thrown the groping into survival crisis. In fact the impatience with the congress among alliance partners of INDIA is growing with many pointing fingers at the largest opposition constituent of the grand alliance for contributing to the BJP’s triumph in Delhi polls. The AAP defeat and the congresses’ humiliating debacle in Delhi assembly polls has given birth to further challenges for the already –faltering INDIA bloc. All the above implies that all is not well with the INDIA bloc and there are deepening fissures and confrontations between various constituents of the opposition alliance and the ship of INDIA bloc may sink in future unless its constituents take appropriate remedial measures .INDIA alliance leaders should put their own combined house in order than negatively criticizing the NDA/BJP.
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