New Delhi: The fourth meeting of the INDIA bloc of opposition parties Tuesday saw West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal push for the declaration of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as its prime ministerial face in the 2024 polls.
Banerjee, who leads the Trinamool Congress (TMC), made the proposal, which was backed by AAP national convener Kejriwal, according to leaders who attended the nearly three-hour meeting held at the Ashoka Hotel here.
Banerjee had told a group of reporters Monday that the INDIA bloc would be better off not projecting any PM face before the elections. But she had also stated in the gathering that Kharge was a “good man” while insisting that she was not in favour of projecting a PM face before the polls.
Addressing a press conference after the meeting, which was attended by 28 parties, Kharge neither confirmed nor denied that his name was proposed as a consensus prime ministerial candidate.
“It is more important to focus on winning the elections. PM face can be decided later. We need to improve the count of our MPs first. If there are no MPs, what is the point of having a PM face?” he remarked.
Apart from the AAP, at least nine other parties were on board with the TMC supremo’s proposal, sources told ThePrint. Even in the meeting, however, Kharge maintained that he was not hankering for any post.
The press conference was attended by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, DMK MP T.R. Baalu, CPI general Secretary D. Raja, JMM MP Mahua Maji, among others. Several other heads of parties left the venue right after the meeting.
Ever since the INDIA bloc of parties began talks to stitch together a coalition to take on the BJP in 2024, the question of who will be its face has repeatedly surfaced due to the presence of a large number of leaders whose parties have held up their names as prospective PM candidates.
Names that have been propped up so far include that of Bihar CM and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar, TMC’s Banerjee, AAP’s Kejriwal and NCP’s Sharad Pawar, among others. The Congress, meanwhile, had stated in the third meeting of INDIA in Mumbai that its leaders, be it Rahul Gandhi or Kharge, are not in the race to emerge as a consensus PM candidate.
On Tuesday, two leaders present in the meeting said that Banerjee proposed Kharge’s name as the “coordinator of the alliance and its PM face”. Kejriwal, who spoke after Banerjee, seconded the suggestion.
The contentious issue of seat-sharing continued to remain unsettled even in the fourth meeting of the alliance, with Kharge announcing that the bloc’s state-level leaders will focus on identifying seats where common candidates can be fielded.
“Differences, if any, will be ironed out at the national level,” he said.
Ahead of the meeting, the Congress also announced the formation of a five-member National Alliance Committee comprising former Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh chief ministers Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel, former Union ministers Mukul Wasnik and Salman Khurshid, and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Mohan Prakash.
Tamil Nadu CM and DMK chief M.K. Stalin said that the “strongest party in a state” should take the lead in the seat-sharing talks, a proposal made by other regional parties including the SP, RJD and TMC in previous meetings — in Patna in June, Bengaluru in July and Mumbai in September.
Delhi and Punjab, where the AAP is in power, are among the states where seat-sharing talks will be “sorted out”, Kharge said Tuesday, adding that “(seat-sharing differences in) Uttar Pradesh will also be resolved”.
With this statement, he appeared to be suggesting that the Congress and the SP are ready to bury the hatchet for the larger interest of the Opposition.
Sources in the TMC and the Shiv Sena (UBT) said that their leaders proposed during the meeting Tuesday that seat-sharing talks be concluded before other issues are taken up for discussion.
Seat-sharing talks among INDIA members came to a virtual standstill after its third meeting in Mumbai, despite the bloc having set up sub-committees to focus on this area, with the Congress shifting its focus to assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram.
Soon after the Congress suffered a resounding defeat in the heartland states of Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, the party reached out to other opposition parties to resume talks to put up a united front in the general election next year.
Sources said that some regional parties pointed out in the meeting Tuesday that joint rallies ahead of the last round of assembly polls would have helped. This was in the context of a decision made at the Mumbai meeting of the INDIA bloc — to hold joint rallies, including in Bhopal, ahead of the assembly election in MP — which did not materialise.
In Tuesday’s meeting, the proposal to hold joint rallies received another push. Kharge announced that over the next few months, the bloc will hold 8-10 rallies across the country so that voters warm up to the idea of a united Opposition taking on the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls.
“It’s important that we are seen together on one stage,” he said.
CPI(ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya proposed that a joint rally be held in Patna on 30 January to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, who was assassinated on that day in 1948. Other Bihar-based parties including the JD(U), RJD backed the proposal. The CPI(ML) is a part of the six-party ruling coalition in Bihar led by the JD(U).
For now, the INDIA bloc will hold a nationwide protest on 22 December against the suspension of 141 MPs from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
The meeting also saw a resolution being passed “condemning” the suspensions, apart from discussions on 100 percent verification of VVPAT slips to prevent “EVM manipulations”, and the pran pratishtha (consecration) of the idol of Ram lala at the temple in Ayodhya.
It is learnt that some leaders expressed concern that the BJP and the RSS “will use the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in January to their political advantage and it was necessary to counter its narrative”.
However, the Opposition’s demand for a nationwide caste census did not figure in the discussion Tuesday, suggesting that there was no consensus among INDIA alliance partners on this issue, especially after former Congress president Rahul Gandhi endorsed the demand in public meetings in the run-up to the recently-concluded assembly elections.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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