Heading into 2024, Congress, INDIA allies brace for bumps: seat-sharing to narrative, PM face to Hindutva

And, seat-sharing is the least of the challenges that the Opposition bloc, and especially the Congress, is faced with. The Congress is taking heart from the fact that the party has retained a healthy vote share even in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh – where it lost to the BJP in the recent Assembly polls – but its challenge in the last few years has been to find a formula for a 5-6% top-up in vote share that could enable it to surpass the BJP.

Lack of new ideas, narrative

The biggest challenge that the Congress faces is its inability to come up with a refreshing new narrative to counter the BJP. A credible story which the party can sell, fresh ideas which can appeal to youth, women and people at large. A large section of the party believes that merely positioning itself as a countervailing force to the BJP without a solid alternative governance framework was a recipe for failure.

“We have to answer this question. Why should someone vote for the Congress? What are your new set of ideas, who are your new people, how are you going to reach out to the people in a changed manner,” a party leader said. In 2019, the Congress believed its manifesto promise NYAY – the assurance to make an annual cash transfer of Rs 72,000 to the poorest 20% of all families – would be a game changer. It came a cropper.

Over the last five years, the Congress’s two new electoral prescriptions have been welfare sops (called guarantees) and the pitch for a caste census. “Caste census was a fresh idea. Whether it worked or not was a different thing. On the economic front, what is it that we presented? On competitive welfare, it is now clear that the party in power is better at delivery. It is like competitive Hindutva…we can never be better than them. So the question is, what new can we offer,” said the leader.

Now, Rahul is set to embark on another yatra – Bharat Nyay Yatra – whose focus would be on livelihood issues like unemployment and price rise. “But can we simply keep repeating that the government has failed on the job front. The question is what is our roadmap for creation of jobs. Do we have a plan…we better have. I think the senior leadership would come up with something credible,” another leader said.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra evoked a good response among people because the idea was fresh, one leader said. “Nobody expected the Congress or Rahul Gandhi to do such a thing. When we do something new, something fresh, it works. It was a new thought process,” he said. While the Congress now has a non-Gandhi at the helm after over two decades, the leadership line-up looks jaded. “In 2014, the party lost. It’s been ten years. And it is exactly the same set of people who are running the show. From an average voter’s perspective, nothing has changed.”

Seat-sharing tangle

Ensuring trouble-free seat-sharing is going to be another big challenge for the Congress and the INDIA bloc parties. Some amount of hard bargaining and ego tussle are inevitable but the parties – divided in ideology but united in their shared animus against the BJP – will have to negotiate the seat- sharing challenge deftly.

The idea behind the formation of the INDIA alliance was to ensure that there is one joint Opposition candidate against the BJP in 400 to 450 Lok Sabha constituencies to check any division in the Opposition’s votes. None of the parties has so far sat across the negotiating table to discuss seat-sharing despite many of them asserting that the process would be completed by the end of December or the middle of January.

The Congress will finally kickstart the process of internal consultations on the seat-sharing issue on Friday. The party’s embarrassing defeat in the heartland has robbed it of a crucial negotiating chip. Sources in the Congress high command said the party is prepared to adopt a flexible approach vis-a-vis its allies this time, but the question is whether its state units would agree.

It is clear that seat-sharing will run into rough weather in West Bengal, where the Left will not enter into an alliance with the Trinamool Congress (TMC); Punjab, where the state Congress is opposed to any truck with the ruling AAP; Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Many of the parties are also keenly tracking the JD(U) camp given mixed signals being sent out by Nitish Kumar.

PM face and common agenda

While most of the INDIA constituents are of the view that the alliance need not project a PM face against Modi, Mamata Banerjee’s suggestion that she was even prepared to back Mallikarjun Kharge, a Dalit leader, as the candidate and Arvind Kejriwal’s fulsome support for her proposal has intrigued many in the grouping.

The BJP will surely frame “Modi versus who” as a campaign point. The challenge before the alliance is to speak in one voice over the PM face. Another challenge for it is drawing up a common programme for the alliance. Most of the parties have ruled out the idea of a common manifesto. They say a common agenda – listing out a dozen or so ideas and promises on which there is a broad agreement – is a workable proposal.

But given that the parties have different and differing ideologies, another challenge is to keep contentious issues at bay and avoid unnecessary friction. DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks on Sanatan Dharma, a DMK MP’s disparaging remarks about north Indian states and former Union minister Dayanidhi Maran’s statements on migrants from Bihar and UP have upset most of the heartland parties.

Countering Hindutva

The immediate challenge facing the Congress and its INDIA allies is to counter the Hindutva-laced campaign of the BJP. The parties have already started speaking in different voices on the invitation for attending the Ram Temple consecration ceremony on January 22. While the Congress is yet to decide whether it would send a representative to Ayodhya, the CPI(M) has declared that its general secretary Sitaram Yechury will not attend the event.

On the other hand, Samajwadi Party MP Dimple Yadav, wife of party chief Akhilesh Yadav, has said she would attend the Ayodhya event if invited. Jharkhand CM and JMM leader Hemant Soren said he has not received an invite so far, adding that “If I receive it, I will attend the ceremony.”

The Forward Bloc, another constituent of the INDIA bloc, has issued a statement asking the Opposition parties to stay away from the Ayodhya function. “It is wise for the representatives of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties including Indian National Congress to stay away from the function so as not to fall into BJP’s trap,” Forward Bloc general secretary G Devarajan said Thursday. Most of the INDIA parties have not spelt out their stances on the matter. Speaking in one voice to take on the BJP on issues related to Hindutva is another big challenge for the Opposition.