“Chak de INDIA,” read a gleeful tweet from Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien soon after the 26 opposition parties on July 18 declared that their alliance to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP would be called ‘INDIA’ – an acronym for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at a press conference in Bengaluru said that the fight for 2024 Lok Sabha elections in 2024 is between NDA and INDIA. The name of the new opposition alliance was accepted after much deliberation on the second day of the opposition conclave in Bengaluru.
The opposition meeting was attended by Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Kharge, Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, former Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and leaders of other parties. After the meeting, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, all the opposition parties have decided to come together “to save the country”. A coordination committee will be set up, and it has been decided to hold the next opposition meeting in Mumbai, Kharge announced.
The Bengaluru meet of the opposition party has set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. But taking on Modi’s BJP – which won more than 300 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha in 2019 – will be a formidable challenge even for a mostly united opposition. Many of the opposition parties are also at loggerheads with each other in states such as West Bengal and Delhi due to differing political ideologies. However, it looks like a strong anti-BJP sentiment is uniting the opposition, pushing them to look past their differences.
One thing to note is that, while the opposition alliance has regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee, M K Stalin and Arvind Kejriwal who run the states where their parties are in power, most of the other leaders attending the Bengaluru meet have lost their political support base. For example, Shiv Sena (UT) chief Uddhav Thackeray is in the alliance, but most of his party MLAs led by Eknath Shinde are now part of NDA. Sharad Pawar attended the Bengaluru meeting, but a large section of his party led by his nephew Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel is now in the NDA.
The BJP also held a meeting of the 38-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that it heads in New Delhi on July 18. Overall, BJP’s strategy is to accommodate as many local parties with a mass base from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the NDA. This experiment proved successful in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Though one may not find big political leaders in the 38-party NDA, there are leaders who have their own support bases. These parties can change the final result in close fights. It remains to be seen how the voters react in 2024 when it comes to INDIA and NDA.
