The question before INDIA: What should the alliance map look like now?

Since the Lok Sabha elections, the leaders of the alliance have sat across a table only during the two Parliament Sessions so far. Even at this table, the Trinamool Congress, the third-largest party in the Opposition, is missing and remains perhaps the only one in the INDIA bloc to have not entered into a seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress anywhere. It is in that sense not an electoral ally of the Congress.

While the Congress often faces criticism from all and sundry, the grand old party’s leadership argues that it has accommodated its partners a lot when it comes to seat-sharing and points out that it contested the least number of seats in its history in the last Lok Sabha elections. Haryana where the Congress went alone, they said, is an exception.

However, it still leaves the question whether the alliance is just an electoral one or an ideological bulwark against the BJP.

In the INDIA bloc, state issues remain supreme for regional parties. The Congress, a national party with a pan-Indian footprint, has to do the balancing act. So, while the regional parties are with the Congress on the Adani bribery scandal – crony capitalism as a political weapon to attack the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the default setting of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi for some time – it is not the main issue for many of them.

Adani or the continuing violence in Manipur figures rarely in the political rhetoric of many of the Opposition parties, barring perhaps the Left. Even on the Congress’s demand for a JPC probe into the Adani saga, many fellow Opposition parties, especially the TMC and NCP, are not on board.

On Tuesday, the Shiv Sena (UBT) asked the Congress to introspect and take steps for Opposition unity, in view of the AAP announcing that it will go solo in the Delhi Assembly polls. “In West Bengal, (TMC chief) Mamata Banerjee is trying to do politics by keeping Congress at a distance. Now (Arvind) Kejriwal is also treading the same path. This is a matter where the Congress has to introspect and take steps for (opposition) unity,” an editorial in the Sena (UBT)’s mouthpiece Saamna said.

Interestingly, Congress leaders at both the national and state level parrot Gandhi’s line – be it on Adani, caste census, Constitution or the Rafale deal earlier. However, that is not the case with other Opposition parties.

It is a lesson that the Congress learns, unlearns and learns again every now and then. After not letting the Parliament function for a week over the Adani issue, the grand old party has now climbed down – the face saver being a discussion on the Constitution that the government has agreed to be taken up 10 days from now.

But Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge seems to have sensed the wind. At the CWC meeting last week, he emphasised that the party needed to focus on local issues if it wanted to catch the imagination of people in those states.

“We may have lost the elections, but there is no doubt that unemployment, inflation and economic inequality are burning issues. Caste census is also an important issue today. Issues like the Constitution, social justice and harmony are issues of the people. But this does not mean that we forget important local issues in the electoral states. It is also important to understand the different issues of the states in detail in time and make a solid campaign strategy around it. Till when will you fight state elections with the help of national issues and national leaders?” he said.

The Uttar Pradesh Congress’s decision to take up the Sambhal mosque issue prominently may be in tune with Kharge’s thinking. Its partner SP has put its weight behind it, with its Muslim vote bank in mind, which is also a Congress support base. At least two MPs from Uttar Pradesh recently met Gandhi to urge him to visit Sambhal, and he is now scheduled to go there Wednesday.

The Congress national leadership too speaks about this in the context of the Places of Worship Act, 1991, and “the poison of communalism”. But it realises that the state unit has to do the groundwork and mobilisation. The party has also figured that it has been able to dislodge the BJP only in those states where its units have been consistently proactive and aggressive – not just in the months ahead of elections – with Telangana and Karnataka prime examples.

In Kharge’s words again: “The recent election results also indicate that we should start our election preparations in states at least a year in advance. Our teams should be present in the field well in advance. The first task should be to check voter lists so that the votes of those in our favour (figure) under all circumstances. We cannot get success all the time by following the old path. You have to see on a daily basis what your political opponent is doing. We have to make timely decisions. Accountability has to be fixed.”