The Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) has fallen short of the target that it had set for itself on June 1, when they announced that the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition will win 295 seats. The INDIA bloc will meet on June 5 to chart out its strategy for the road ahead, with no single party crossing the majority mark.
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Both Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior party leader Rahul Gandhi thanked the INDIA allies. Mr. Kharge applauded the INDIA bloc allies for speaking in “one voice”, for campaigning together, and for good coordination. Mr. Gandhi also gave credit to the Congress for respecting the wishes of the allies, and underlined that wherever a seat-sharing arrangement had been in place, the bloc had fought unitedly.
The INDIA bloc was leading on 232 seats till 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening. The tally includes the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which fought alone. With speculation on the TMC’s allegiance, party president and and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee defined the results as “INDIA has won, Modi has lost”. “TMC and Mamata Banerjee is one of the co-creators of INDIA bloc. 200% committed,” the TMC’s Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’ Brien said.
But while the allies can pat themselves now, their campaign had begun on a faltering note. On January 25, when the BJP launched its campaign song, the INDIA bloc was still struggling to find its footing. A day earlier, Ms. Banerjee had announced her decision to fly solo, blaming the Left parties for the break-up. Four days later, its founding member, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, led his party, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) back to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The seat-sharing arrangements were also not in place. Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress sealed the deal on February 21; Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress announced theirs for four States and Chandigarh on February 24; Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-Congress came together on March 9; while the negotiations in Bihar went on till March 29, a day after the last date for filing nomination papers in the first phase of polls on April 19. In Maharashtra, where the INDIA bloc has made one of the biggest gains, it went down to the wire, with the seat formula announced only on April 9. The Congress, the biggest Opposition party, went out of their way to cede space for their regional allies.
INDIA bloc leaders claim that the delay did not come in the way of their electoral performance. “The seat sharing arrangement cannot be fixed in Delhi. It has to be done at the State-level and that is exactly what was done. We managed to have a credible arrangement in place to minimise the BJP wherever possible. Even to fight separately in Kerala, Punjab, and West Bengal, was with this aim in mind,” Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said.
The INDIA bloc’s journey began on June 23, 2023, when 16 Opposition parties came together in Patna. In its second meeting in Bengaluru in July 2023, Mr. Gandhi coined the name — INDIA — reframing the Opposition versus BJP battle as that of BJP versus the people of the country.
But the bloc failed to capitalise on the momentum it had built and the organisational structures that it envisaged in its third meeting in Mumbai (on August 31-September 1). Its aim of pooling resources for campaigning and formulating a cohesive election strategy remained non-functional. The CPI(M) rejected the committees, choosing informal communication instead. The lone decision by the 11-member coordination committee of the bloc to hold a joint rally in Bhopal, ahead of the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh in September 2023, did not take off. The allies were also angry with the Congress for focusing on the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from January 14 to March 16, taking its eyes off the INDIA bloc.
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But once the campaign began, even in the absence of a formal decision-making structure, the bloc spoke in one voice, attacking the BJP government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on imperilling the Constitution, “capturing” institutions, and demolishing the federal structure. The group united under the banner of “save democracy”. The bloc also had high recall value among voters, partly because of the consistent attack by the BJP Mr. Modi, who derisively referred to it as “INDI-Alliance”.
“Such blocs cannot function under formal structures. We have had regular informal conversations throughout the campaign and it has brought in the results,” Mr. Yechury said.
