No lull within INDIA, behind door consultations on, says Congress

The issue of naming a chairperson and convenor for the alliance has been put on hold as the Coordination Committee is doing that work. Also, though the alliance’s national Secretariat is yet to be established in Delhi, most of the assistance was being provided by the Congress president’s office, writes Amit Agnihotri

New Delhi:The Congress on Sunday dispelled the notion that work within the opposition alliance INDIA had gone slow after the cancellation of the joint rally in Bhopal in October. The joint rally was announced by AICC General Secretary in-charge of the organisation KC Venugopal after the first meeting of the 13-member Coordination Committee of INDIA alliance in New Delhi on September 13, but was later cancelled by the grand old party citing its pre-occupation in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls.

Since then, there has been no information from the opposition alliance related to key issues like seat-sharing, joint campaigns, or the proposed venues of joint rallies. “Our top leadership, including party president Mallikarjun Kharge, former president Rahul Gandhi and senior leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are busy campaigning in the poll-bound states and so are the respective state units. But, that does not mean that the INDIA alliance has gone into a lull and parallel meetings cannot be held. A lot of behind-the-door consultations related to seat-sharing, joint campaigns and social media strategies have been taking place over the past weeks,” AICC Coordinator in Congress President’s office Syed Naseer Hussain told ETV Bharat.

“As this is not a centralised alliance, the consultations are mostly taking place in the states. Several rounds of consultations between the parties were held during the five-day special Parliament session from September 18 to 22 and over the last week in New Delhi,” he said. According to party insiders, the social media and Joint Campaign Sub-committees of the INDIA alliance have met in Mumbai and Delhi in person and subsequent consultations have been online over the past weeks. The party insiders further stated that though the joint meeting may not be held in any of the poll-bound states, discussions are going on to hold such a gathering at a suitable location.

“See, if you plan a public meeting you need to mobilise between one lakh and two lakh people. Then issues like resources come in which means, who will host the joint rally. Furthermore, the availability of senior leaders also needs to be worked out. But, we are planning some events for this month,” said a senior AICC functionary. Noting that there were some seat-sharing issues within the alliance, the party insiders said the idea was to first reach a broad consensus and then work on the bottlenecks, if any.

For instance, the break-up of seat-sharing in the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar was being handled by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad. Similarly, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav in UP, which has 80 seats and NCP boss Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra, which has 48 seats were doing their bit, said the party insiders.

The issue of naming a chairperson and convenor for the alliance has been put on hold as the Coordination Committee is doing that work. Also, though the alliance’s national Secretariat is yet to be established in Delhi, most of the assistance was being provided by the Congress president’s office, the insiders said.

According to AICC social media in-charge Supriya Shrinate, merely because the alliance leaders were not together in a particular city and they were not addressing the media jointly should not mean that the partners were not talking to each other. “A lot of consultations are taking place over the phone, conference calls, and Zoom meetings. Not every bit of information is for media consumption. Once things are firmed up, we will certainly make a formal announcement,” Shrinate told ETV Bharat.