After doddering for the past few months, the Opposition has got a shot in the arm with Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress finalising their seat-sharing agreement in Uttar Pradesh. This is a milestone in the long road to opposition unity that still remains distant at a national level against the BJP. The agreement sees each side gaining something in the bargain. The Congress has got a respectable figure, though out of the 17 seats that it will contest, not many hold much electoral promise against a dominant BJP. Sonia Gandhi will not be contesting Rae Bareli, which the Congress has won 17 times since 1952. Whether one or both of her children, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, will contest, choosing between Rae Bareli and neighbouring Amethi, remains an open question. Mr. Gandhi is trying to bring his battle against the BJP to the heartlands of U.P. As for the SP, the alliance is crucial in sustaining its social base of Yadavs and Muslims which resists the BJP. The Congress and the SP have found their alliance not merely mutually beneficial but also critical for their survival. It should be noted, however, that an alliance is no guarantee of victory. In 2019, the SP-BSP alliance could not aggregate its individual vote shares of 2014, and ended up a distant second to the BJP.
The SP-Congress tie-up is the rare good news that the INDIA bloc needs, hit by attrition with the exit of two of its partners, the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar and the Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, in recent days. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress and Congress are again in talks, though the broad contours of the conversation have not changed. The TMC remains adamant on conceding only two seats in the State and wanting a seat in Meghalaya and two in Assam. Neither have the conditions that led to the breakdown in talks improved since then. Coinciding with the revival of negotiations, Congress State President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury visited Sandeshkhali, which is the new battleground between the TMC and the BJP. Attacking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, he called her the “queen of cruelty”. Opposition parties have not been able to announce seat sharing in Tamil Nadu and Bihar as yet. For the alliance to seamlessly work, the dominant partners in each State will have to cede ground to others, setting aside their own aspirations, while others will have to show the grace to accept the ground realities without basking in past glory.
