The fourth meeting of the 28-party INDIA alliance did not produce a common vision document listing an agenda to take on the BJP-led NDA in 2024. All talk of setting up a campaign secretariat seemed to have vanished into thin air. So did the subject of a convener, after months of fevered speculation about assigning the role to Sharad Pawar, or the host of the first Patna conclave, Nitish Kumar.
An MP of Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United (JDU), Sunil Pintu, called it a "tea-biscuit session" in which the samosa had been omitted due to the Congress's pecuniary crunch.
The Congress faced plenty of darts from allies over its state election reverses and was blamed for its refusal to accommodate the seat requests of allies in Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)'s Arvind Kejriwal, who had confabulated bilaterally before the meeting, stumped the alliance collective, especially Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, by pitching the name of their party's president Mallikarjun Kharge as the acceptable "Dalit prime ministerial face".
The Trinamool in West Bengal, and AAP in Delhi and Punjab are wary of the Congress's demand for seats on their turfs. Earlier, Kejriwal had announced at Bathinda that AAP would contest all 13 seats in Punjab. The Congress had won nine of those in the 2019 national election.
From all available indications, the Trinamool is ready to set two seats aside for the Congress in Bengal (Congress won two without an alliance in 2019) but has a condition - the Congress must give it one each in Assam and Meghalaya, both states where the Trinamool is a debutant.
The Kharge googly by Mamata-Kejriwal thus had a Machiavellian undertone.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC), which met on December 21, sidestepped the suggestion. Kharge deflected the issue by focussing the strobe light on Rahul Gandhi by conveying the party's "fervent appeal" for a Bharat Jodo Yatra 2.0.
The yatra has been planned in January. Within the CWC, there was some scepticism about its feasibility and timing. It will be interesting to see the reaction of INDIA alliance parties, who, by and large, seem less than enthused by Rahul's leadership abilities.
Nationwide seat-sharing, the fulcrum of the alliance, has been shelved till mid-January. Mamata Banerjee preferred the year-end. The last conclave in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1 had set a September-end deadline. The Congress, hoping to score big in its one-on-one battles with the BJP in state elections, had postponed the exercise. Despite intense criticism from allies, the Congress was laser-focused on the polls. Now it is back to negotiating table.
At the CWC meeting, the December 19 conclave seemed to recede to the background amid blame fixing over the party's debilitating defeat. Octogenarian Kharge, who has weathered many a storm in his distinguished five-decade career, was quick to sidestep calls to project him as the prime ministerial face.
At the INDIA meet, he asserted that he had never projected himself as a Dalit leader, and that talk of a PM could only take place once there are MPs. His humility notwithstanding, his acceptability and his party's position as Telamon of the alliance was reflected. Axiomatically, the unacceptability of Rahul Gandhi in alliance politics was underscored.
Mamata Banerjee is also said to have suggested that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra be the common candidate against Narendra Modi in Varanasi for 2024. Analysts in Kolkata are wondering why "Didi" doesn't fancy herself as the David of Varanasi in 2024.
While needling the Congress and rejecting the CPI (M), Mamata Banerjee also has in her hands the undercurrent of a rebellion in the Trinamool ranks, from those who view her nephew Abhishek Banerjee as the leader of Bengal's gen-next. Abhishek wants many present MPs dropped.
The day after the conclave, while defending her party MP Kalyan Banerjee's act of mimicking Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar, Mamata Banerjee targeted Rahul Gandhi for taking videos on his mobile phone. If Rahul Gandhi had not done so, she said, the incident would not have blown up so much. (but despite defending Kalyan Banerjee, Mamata excluded him from the 10-member team of MPs she took along for her meeting with Modi on December 20)
To be fair to Rahul Gandhi, the fact that he was making a video of the parody on his cell phone became evident only when TV cameras showed him doing so. The chasm between the Congress, the largest party of the alliance, and its regional partners is all too apparent. Mamata Banerjee's comments betray that rift.
In the meeting, Samajwadi Party leaders questioned whether the Congress was in talks with their bete noire Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in UP. Despite Kharge's objection, Akhilesh Yadav harped on his PDA (Pichhda-Dalit alliance) formula, a strategy aimed against the BSP. Mayawati has stayed away from the INDIA talks. The BSP has a notable presence in Uttar Pradesh and in other states as well.
Despite winning in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, the Congress, prompted by Rahul Gandhi, has been sceptical of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). An attempt to pass a unanimous resolution sharing this scepticism did not take off on December 19. Many alliance leaders felt that the resolution should be limited to demanding that the VVPAT (voter verified paper audit trail) slip be handed over to the voter who can then put it in a ballot box after verifying their vote. This option prevailed over the Congress' outright rejection of EVMs.
Nitish Kumar, perhaps chagrined over Kharge getting preference over him, is said to have lost his shirt when DMK leaders demanded an English translation of his Hindi speech. Pointing out that Hindi is one of the country's official languages, Nitish Kumar went on to endorse renaming the country as Bharat, which had been a red rag for many alliance partners, especially the Congress and DMK. Many Hindi-belt leaders have been upset with the DMK's abrasive stance on Sanatan Dharm. The North-South chasm resurfaced as a sore during the alliance talks.
In 1989, Devi Lal was used by VP Singh as a decoy to thwart Chandra Shekhar's elevation as Prime Minister. Chandra Shekhar, having agreed to back down after being assured that Devi Lal would be Prime Minister, was stunned when Devi Lal proposed VP Singh's name instead. Seasoned observers wonder if by propping up Kharge, Mamta Banerjee is hoping for an opportunity in case the BJP misses the halfway-mark in 2024. Her supporters in Kolkata, like Nitish Kumar-backers in Patna, have been rooting for her as the opposition's face. Nitish Kumar could be the Chandra Shekhar of 2024, his supporters fear.
The enthusiasm and bonhomie that marked previous INDIA meetings and press conferences was missing on December 19. As has been seen in the past meetings, many leaders skipped the post-meet press interaction. Kejriwal had abandoned the briefing in Patna. Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav did so in Bengaluru. Mamata Banerjee left in a huff from Mumbai. In all instances, these luminaries had "a flight to catch". All of them travel by special aircraft, not by scheduled commercial airlines.
On December 19, as Kharge faced the media, Mamata Banerjee, Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Uddhav Thackeray were not by his side.
(Shubhabrata Bhattacharya is a retired Editor and a public affairs commentator)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author