The simmering disagreement among the partners of the INDIA bloc on seat-sharing for the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand despite the electoral process being set in motion points to the inability of the Opposition front to make a fair assessment of the political challenge it faces and its failure to form an essential strategy to make it a winnable exercise.
In Maharashtra, the three main parties of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — the Congress, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Nationalist Congress Party (SP) — have come to a broader understanding of contesting 85 seats each with the remaining seats being allotted to the minor partners. By and large, the Congress has been accommodative of the demands of the other two partners the way it was during the seat-sharing talks for the Lok Sabha elections. Despite the huge pressure from the local unit and its chief, the party went to the negotiating table with a will to make concessions so that everyone emerges a victor when the final votes are counted. The MVA must now become magnanimous towards the minor partners in the same vein.
Jharkhand paints a similar story where the main alliance partners — the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Congress — have reached a broad agreement but the minor partners feel humiliated. The Rashtriya Janata Dal which won one seat last time has announced that it will not wreck the alliance despite being denied the share it felt legitimately belonged to it. The CPI(ML), too, expressed its disappointment.
The experiences of the Assembly elections held in October-November 2023 and the 2024 Lok Sabha election should have been the guiding light for the Opposition bloc during the seat-sharing talks. But the Congress clearly seems to have forgotten the costly lesson it learnt in the 2023 Assembly elections leading it to course-correct in the LS election. Indeed, its lack of respect towards coalition partners in Haryana did cost it a chance to form its government, but the worse outcome is actually the re-energisation of the saffron party and the increased confidence with which its leaders and cadre there speak now.
The elections to the Maharashtra Assembly has a special role in the matrix of Opposition politics in that it sends the second largest contingent to the Rajya Sabha. It was only recently that the NDA secured a majority in the Upper House. A repeat of the Haryana show in Maharashtra at this juncture would get reflected in the numbers in Rajya Sabha and will make the ruling combine sit snug in both the houses of Parliament. That would weaken the system of checks and balances of our democracy and the blame for it would fall on the Congress’ shoulders.
