With Lok Sabha elections just over three months away, the Congress party rang in the New Year with a dash of assertion as it tries to do a tightrope walk in keeping the INDIA bloc intact without compromising on its own electoral interests in states where it sees itself as a strong contender. The Congress is engrossed in a hard bargain in West Bengal and Maharashtra, states that collectively account for 90 Lok Sabha seats, as the INDIA allies get down to the nitty-gritty of seat-sharing discussions.
On the one hand is the regional behemoth Trinamool Congress, a fierce opponent to both the BJP and the Congress in West Bengal that is unwilling to cede any space to Congress in the state if they contest elections together. On the other are partners Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra where a weakened Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar are trying to gain an upper hand over the grand old party.
Mamata ruining INDIA prospects in West Bengal: Adhir Ranjan
Matters appear to have come to a pass in West Bengal where the Congress and the TMC have been traditional rivals. On Sunday, West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury took strong exception to Mamata Banerjee’s remark earlier in the week. Addressing a rally in North 24 Parganas, Mamata said, “INDIA will be there across India but in Bengal the Trinamool Congress will put up a good fight.”
Accusing the TMC supremo of ruining the prospects of the alliance among INDIA bloc constituents in West Bengal, Chowdhury said that the TMC is opposed to an alliance with the Congress in the state despite backing an alliance at the national level.
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“Didi (Mamata Banerjee) is ruining the prospect of the alliance in the state. If you listen to what she said, it will be clear that she did not want an alliance. Her party says that it is interested in the alliance nationally, but not in Bengal. It is clear that the CM does not want an alliance here,” Chowdhury said, adding that the Congress is preparing to contest the state polls on its own.
The Congress and the TMC are locked in a tussle over the number of seats each alliance constituent will contest out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state. According to The Indian Express, the Trinamool is bent on offering only two seats to the Congress – Berhampore and Malda South. The two constituents are the only seats the party had won in the 2019 polls. A demand from the Congress has rattled the TMC leadership, the report said.
In the 2019 elections, Mamata-led TMC bagged 22 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state while the BJP made considerable gains to win 18 seats while the Congress finished third with 2 seats while the CPI(M) failed to win any seat.
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Seat-sharing talks stuck in Maharashtra
Far away in Maharashtra, a state with the second-highest Lok Sabha seats (48) after Uttar Pradesh (80), the INDIA bloc partners are far from being on the same page on the issue of seat-sharing. On Monday, NCP leader Supriya Sule said that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), that also comprises Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT), have finalised seats each ally will contest in the state.
However, the claim was quickly rejected by the Congress which said that seats would be distributed only based on merit and winnability. The Sena, on the other hand, said that the seat-sharing talks were only finalised between them and the NCP of Sharad Pawar. There is no consensus on the seat-sharing formula with the Congress so far, a Shiv Sena (UBT) leader part of the negotiations told The Indian Express.
The remarks came after a major war of words between Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam and Sena MP Sanjay Raut. The Sena is unwilling to bend on its demand to contest 23 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats while the Congress insists that most of the Sena’s MPs sided with Eknath Shinde following his rebellion causing a vertical split in the party.
Raut, on the other hand, sought to offer Congress a reality check by reminding the party that it currently has zero Lok Sabha MPs in the state. He suggested that the Congress, with no seats in the state, should begin negotiations from zero seats. “This is Maharashtra and Shiv Sena is the biggest party here. Congress is a national party… We have always said that Shiv Sena has always been fighting on 23 seats in the Lok Sabha elections and during our (INDIA alliance) meeting, we decided that discussions will be done later on the seats that we have won,” Raut said on Friday.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections that the undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP jointly contested, the NDA won 41 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Of these, the Shiv Sena won 18 of the 23 seats it contested while the BJP bagged 23 of the 25 seats it fielded its candidates from. The Congress, which contested the elections in alliance with the NCP, bagged 1 seat of the 25 seats it contested from while the NCP won 4 of the 19 seats it fought. However, the lone Congress MP from the state, Suresh Dhanorkar, passed away in May this year, leaving the party without an MP in the state for the first time.