It’s now or never. And the Opposition knows this. The idea of a joint candidate against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha elections 2024 is gathering weight in the fissured ranks, with one perquisite uniting regional parties – the Congress must stay out of their seats.
From Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal to Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, regional leaders feel the Congress must stick to seats it can definitely win and not muddy the waters by putting up candidates in all seats. While the logic might make sense to the high command, it’s the state units that need convincing, and even cajoling.
The proposal of a joint candidate in 2024 general elections originated with Bihar CM and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar ahead of the June 12 Opposition meeting in Patna. Meeting Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi on May 22 — the second such meeting in the last one-and-a-half months — Kumar is said to have stressed on “all against one” strategy.
The idea gained momentum with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee backing it while congratulating the Congress on its Karnataka election win. “The time has come for a joint Opposition candidate,” the Trinamool Congress chief said.
Similar proposals had come to naught before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but this time, it has in-principle agreement from most parties that hold turfs in states that send sizeable MPs to the Lok Sabha like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The biggest hump would be a seat-sharing plan agreeable to all.
In West Bengal, the TMC would not want the Congress to put up candidates in constituencies except the ones it can win, like Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary in his stronghold Murshidabad.
How the grand old party will likely respond to such a condition from Mamata Banerjee was reflected in Jairam Ramesh’s tweet on Tuesday.
“Three months after he was elected as a Congress MLA in a historic victory Bayron Biswas has been lured away by the TMC in West Bengal. This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency,” he said.
Three months after he was elected as a Congress MLA in a historic victory Bayron Biswas has been lured away by the TMC in West Bengal. This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency. Such poaching which has happened earlier in…— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) May 30, 2023
Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party feels the Congress would just end up wasting votes and that it’s best it stays out.
For the Congress, the idea has limited appeal. It has proposed the same for years now in Amethi and Rae Bareli, which is one of the reasons it had been winning these Lok Sabha seats.
At a press conference in Mumbai, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said: “We have been working on the proposal for one Opposition candidate in at least 450 seats. It’s a work in progress.”
The biggest roadblock would be its own state units. Take the example of the recent Ordinance on Delhi by the Centre. The idea of the Opposition, including Congress, siding with the Aam Aadmi Party against the BJP-led central government is simply not palatable to the Punjab and Delhi units that were wiped out by the Arvind Kejriwal’s 10-year-old party. The sentiment was conveyed to the high command following a meeting of Punjab and Delhi Congress units to discuss support for AAP on the issue.
“We are dead against the idea of supporting AAP. I have already made public why there are reasons the Ordinance must not be opposed,” senior Delhi Congress leader Ajay Maken told News18 recently.
Given its reaction to the Ordinance, no points for guessing if the Delhi Congress would be willing to not put up candidates against the AAP in the seven Lok Sabha seats of the national capital.
Self-interest has always trumped larger interest, more so in politics. Will ‘joint opposition candidate’ be a non-starter in 2024 too?
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