INDIA looks for direction as Rahul Yatra trundles on, BJP races down temple road

All this at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have framed a new, and complex, challenge to the Opposition with the grand celebrations around the opening of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. On Tuesday, the party also sealed Mandal firmly with Kamandal by announcing the Bharat Ratna for socialist icon Karpoori Thakur.

On Monday, Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee accused the CPI(M) of controlling the meetings of the INDIA alliance. And then, having led an all-faith rally on the day of the Ram Temple consecration, she interestingly added: “How many politicians today have taken on the BJP frontally… hit the streets? Somebody went to a temple and thinks that is sufficient. It is not so. I am the only one who took out a rally and visited a temple, a gurdwara, a church and a mosque.”

It was as much a message to the CPI(M) as to the Congress, which has been flirting with soft Hindutva. A big part of Rahul’s Monday was spent on a collision course with the BJP government in Assam over the shrine visit.

Mamata’s INDIA allies are hardly likely to take this lying down. The CPI(M), which conversely blames the TMC for helping the BJP grow in Bengal due to its politics, has practically ruled out any seat-sharing pact with the TMC in Bengal. It has also told the Congress that it will not attend the Yatra in the Bengal leg if the TMC is on the stage. The seat negotiations of the TMC with the Congress too have been in choppy waters.

The Congress central leadership is still hopeful. “We, me personally and the party, have good relations with Mamataji. Haan thoda-thoda hota rehta hai (Yes, there are minor tiffs). Sometimes somebody from her party says something, sometimes someone from our party says something, these are natural things. These are not things that are going to disrupt anything,” Rahul said at a press conference in Assam Tuesday.

Talking to The Indian Express, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said his party did not see Mamata’s claims worthy of a response, pointing out that the TMC had days ago called them a terrorist organisation. “Everybody knows the absurdity of calling us a terrorist organisation… Everything that is done in the INDIA meeting is done collectively. So there is no question of anybody’s dominance or anything,” Yechury said.

However, he also signalled that the CPI(M) may not share the Yatra stage if the TMC was present. “We have asked them (the Congress) to tell us the route and timing. We will see. We have not made a decision yet. In Assam, we were there. In Bihar, they have invited the Mahagathbandhan. We are part of that, so we will be there. Wherever we already are in some sort of an arrangement, where the Congress is also there, we will attend.”

Agreeing with Rahul that rumblings within an alliance were not surprising, Yechury added: “The TMC has to decide where it will stand – with the BJP or with INDIA. It is up to them. It is up to every party to take that call.”

However, while Bengal differences are in the face, seat-sharing arrangements in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra between the Congress and other parties have not made much headway either.

Congress allies such as the JD(U) are keeping a wary eye on this. While in Bihar the pact is more or less sealed (17 seats each for the JD-U and RJD, 5 for the Congress and one for the CPI-ML Liberation), JD(U) leaders hold the Congress is responsible for the delay in other states by insisting on an “unreasonable” number of seats in states where it is a marginal player and not willing to share enough in states where it is a dominant force.

Nitish has also questioned the fact that Rahul Yatra was conceived as a Congress programme and not as a joint INDIA campaign.

He had earlier expressed his open displeasure at the delay in finalisation of leadership roles within the INDIA bloc by turning down the convener position. A week has passed even since the INDIA bloc online meeting where this came to pass – skipped incidentally by Mamata, Akhilesh and the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Uddhav Thackeray.

The fact that the alliance is yet to even formally announce the decision at the meeting to appoint Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairperson of INDIA signals that the consultations are either underway or that there is lack of unanimity on the decision.

Mamata, for one, is said to be not happy with the decision, having indicated in her Monday’s speech that the TMC felt sidelined. She also underlined in the speech that it was she who suggested the name INDIA for the alliance.

Meanwhile, fumbling to frame its response, the INDIA alliance is looking at another prospect of the BJP stealing a march: the party’s first list of 150-160 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections is expected in the next fortnight.