Seat sharing is seemingly not an easy task for the I.N.D.I. alliance as TMC, AAP and SP keep on putting pressure on Congress to get less seats as compared to its proportionate share in the coming general elections, political analysts said.
Amid the pulls and pressures over seat sharing, Congress party is seen to be going through a rough patch as several of its important alliance partners are reluctant to give the grand old party proportionate share of seats in their respective states. However, the party insiders suggest the negotiations will continue until the alliance partners get the satisfactory number of seats.
The three heads of their respective parties, Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal and Akhilesh Yadav are seen to have ‘woven a separate web’ within the alliance to hamper the growth of Congress in the states where the three leaders are either running the government or are arrow-heading the principal opposition.
This has generated an impression within Congress leaders that the three parties are not willing to pursue the immediate target of countering the BJP but are concerned about the future of their parties in West Bengal (run by Mamata), Delhi and Punjab (run by Arvind Kejriwal) and Uttar Pradesh (principal opposition party run by Akhilesh). There is a widespread notion among the three leaders that Congress’ growth would eventually reduce the existence of their parties which only have regional presence.
The Sunday Guardian tried to contact TMC and SP however there was no response from them. A senior Congress leader said, “The way every major alliance partner is trying to corner Congress party in their respective regions, and the way nobody is coming forward thinking about negotiating or accommodating Congress proportionately shows that these parties do not have guts to sacrifice. Everybody is thinking about their own parites and not about the alliance or the idea that the alliance was formed upon.”
Moreover, the idea to propose the name of Congress president Malikarjun Kharge as the PM face of the alliance is said to had been prepared by this group (to favour Akhilesh’s interests). As the bloc’s requirement of caste engineering to project a prominent Dalit face within the alliance partners would have sufficed. Which would have ended the political need of towing Mayawati into the alliance.
Moreover, the hard stand taken by Mamata on seat-sharing by offering Congress only two seats in West Bengal has further proved that Mamata may not be in a mood to let any other party sow seeds of growth at the cost of TMC. The TMC has further signalled that it would not meet the five-member national alliance committee of the Congress that has been holding talks with parties of the I.N.D.I.A. alliance to work out seat adjustments in states. However, there are indications that Mamata would further talk to the top leadership of Congress to settle the discord over seat sharing.
A political analyst said, “All the three parties know that if Congress finds footing in these states, it will grow at the cost of these regional parties. Thereby it is political norm to protect your own turf first and then find a shared interest. Though there are solid claims of them being together and finding a way out. But someone will have to sacrifice. In some states it will be regional parties who will have to sacrifice and in some states it will have to be Congress which will have to sacrifice.”