NEW DELHI: It is not just the BJP that will be facing pressure from powerful partners: the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, is also set to face problems within India as it has been resurrected as an ally in running the opposition camp.
The first signs came after the first Indian meeting since the Lok Sabha elections on Wednesday, when the Trinamool Congress appeared to signal its intention to form an extremist group within its coalition to push ahead with its search for potential allies to topple Modi’s government.
Responding to the improved performance of the Indian National Congress, the Samajwadi Party (SP) also increased its seats by seven times with its leader Akikesh Yadav returning to the Indian Lok Sabha, while New Communist Party (SP) leader Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray also proved their worth.
One issue allies are closely watching is whether the BJP will continue to maintain a compromising stance on seat allocation by limiting the contest to 328 seats, as it did in the Lok Sabha elections.
With the party winning 99 seats, allies are not convinced that the Congress, like other parties in the party, will not be strong in the upcoming state elections – elections are due in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi by early next year.
While Wednesday’s meeting “decided” to take “appropriate steps at an appropriate time” to fulfil the “wish” of people that they “don’t want to be governed” by Modi, parties like Trinamool were not content with the “waiting game”.
Indian National Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee told the opposition leader that three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmakers were in touch with his party, but the meeting overwhelmingly opposed taking any rushed steps to form an “alternative” government.
On Thursday, an undeterred Abhishek met Akhilesh, AAP’s Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha in Delhi and then flew to Mumbai to meet Thackeray, demonstrating that the Trinamool Party will not be a “copy of someone else’s strategy”, as a senior Trinamool Party leader put it.
The Trinamool Party went it alone in West Bengal, winning 29 seats, seven more than in 2019, but is reluctant to give too much space to the Indian National Congress.
It will also be interesting to see how Akhilesh, who has been spearheading the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh along with Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, will concede defeat on the national stage after the party increased its seats from five to 37 and its Bharatiya Janata Party vote count in the state below his own.
