INDIA parties sluggish on seat sharing: A month on, the needle moves but barely

Now, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) are at an advanced stage of discussions about sharing seats for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, sources said on Friday. Leaders at the helm of the Congress’s affairs in Madhya Pradesh told The Indian Express that the details were being worked out in Delhi. “The SP cannot win a seat on its own in MP, but we will go with what Delhi tells us,” said a senior leader.

The SP has announced candidates for the seats of Dhauhani in Sidhi district and Chitrangi in Singrauli district (both reserved for the Scheduled Tribes), Mehgaon and Bhander in Bhind district (the latter reserved for Scheduled Castes), Niwari in the district of the same name, Rajnagar in Chhatarpur district, and Sirmaur in Rewa district. Of these seven, the Congress won three in 2018 — Mehgaon, Bhander, and Rajnagar. In some of these constituencies, SP candidates have started campaigning.

Sources in the SP said party president Akhilesh Yadav was directly talking to the Congress leadership about MP. “Akhilesh Yadav is speaking with a senior Congress leader. Earlier, two senior leaders were told to participate in the discussion but ultimately Akhilesh was requested to step in. The discussions are likely to take a final shape soon,” said an SP leader.

Another SP functionary said, “If the alliance is finalised, we may have to change candidates in some of the seats because the local Congress unit was not finding SP candidates winnable. The SP may have to leave those seats where Congress won in 2018.”

The AAP, another constituent of the INDIA bloc, is also fielding candidates in MP, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh. The Left parties also are looking to contest a couple of constituencies. A Congress leader said, “We have been told only about the SP. The AAP and the Left have no presence in MP. We will wait for the high command’s direction.”

The reason for the Congress’s willingness to entertain the SP request — it is among the parties that have been pushing for an early conclusion of seat-sharing talks — is in all likelihood a strategy to ensure that there are no ill feelings when the two parties get down to discussing seat sharing in Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls.

What happened to the joint rallies plan?

It is not just seat sharing on which the INDIA parties have failed to get going. The alliance’s plans to hold joint rallies seem to have lost steam with the Congress leadership “caught up in election management”, as one leader put it.

The decision to hold the first joint public meeting in Bhopal — also made at the September 14 meeting — came undone after Madhya Pradesh Congress expressed its inability to host the event amid the Assembly election campaign.

The bloc’s campaign committee had proposed joint rallies should be held in Chennai, Guwahati, Delhi, Patna, and Nagpur. The idea, one leader said, was to get the top leaders to focus on one issue at each rally. For instance, the focus of the Patna rally could have been caste census and social justice while federal structure could have been the talking point in Chennai. The situation in the Northeast could have been the focus in Guwahati; in Nagpur, the bloc could have talked about secularism and the politics of hatred and polarisation; and, in Delhi, the management of the economy, joblessness, and price rise could have been the talking points.