New Delhi: Ahead of the two-day Mumbai conclave of the INDIA alliance starting 31 August where at least 26 parties will gather, the 5 September bypolls to seven assembly seats across six states are threatening to lay bare the fault-lines confronting the Opposition.
The bypolls will be held in West Bengal (Dhupguri), Kerala (Puthuppally), Uttar Pradesh (Ghosi), Tripura (Dhanpur and Boxanagar), Uttarakhand (Bageshwar), and Jharkhand (Dumri).
The Opposition will fight to retain Ghosi, Dumri, Puthuppally and Boxanagar, and the BJP, which is leading the government at the Centre, the rest.
In Bageshwar, Dhupguri and Puthupally, the contest has turned multi-polar, with the Opposition candidates fighting not just the BJP, but also among themselves, suggesting that the INDIA alliance is nowhere close to working out a seat-sharing formula to field common candidates to prevent the split of votes in 2024.
The ruling BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has also repeatedly underlined that “contradictions” among the partners of the INDIA alliance makes it a non-starter, citing the examples of West Bengal and Kerala in particular.
The bumps ahead on the road to unity are visible not just in these two Opposition-ruled states, but also in BJP-ruled Uttarakhand and Tripura.
In Bageshwar, along with the BJP, INDIA constituents Samajwadi Party (SP) as well as the Congress are in the fray against each other, unlike in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghosi, where the SP candidate has gained the support of the Congress.
To be sure, the SP is a marginal player not just in Bageshwar, but across Uttarakhand, which was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000.
In the 2022 Uttarakhand polls, the SP candidate had secured only 508 votes in Bageshwar, a seat that has gone to the BJP four times consecutively since 2007.
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United and yet not
In Kerala, where the Puthuppally seat fell vacant in July after the death of former state chief minister Oommen Chandy, INDIA constituent CPM has fielded Jaick C. Thomas, who had reduced the Congress stalwart’s winning margin to 9,044 votes in 2021 from 27,092 votes in 2016, according to poll data.
The Congress, meanwhile, has fielded Chandy Oommen, the late CM’s son, hoping to ride the sympathy wave.
In contrast, the CPM and the Congress are fighting as electoral allies in West Bengal and Tripura, taking on the Trinamool Congress and the BJP, respectively. The Congress has not fielded candidates in both the states, choosing to back the CPM candidates instead.
On 1 September, the second day of the INDIA meet, CPM’s Bengal unit secretary Mohammed Salim and Congress state chief Adhir Chowdhury will reportedly address a joint poll rally in Dhupguri in favour of their common candidate, Ishwar Chandra Roy.
The Congress-CPM joint candidate will be pitted against not just Pulwama martyr Jagannath Roy’s widow Tapasi Roy of the BJP — which held the seat until the death of its MLA Bishnu Pada Ray last month — but also key INDIA constituent Trinamool Congress’ Nirmal Chandra Roy.
In the previous West Bengal election, the CPM candidate for Dhupguri, Pradip Kumar Roy, had got only 5.73 per cent of the total votes, suggesting that the contest will still essentially be between the BJP and the Trinamool.
But the Left-Congress combination is deriving hope from the fact that its joint candidate, Bayron Biswas, had defeated the Trinamool rival in the Sagardighi bypolls in February.
The Trinamool’s loss in the minority-dominated Sagardighi seat had prompted West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee to describe the Left-Congress alliance as “immoral” and announce that her party planned to go solo in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
However, following that, Mamata attended both the meetings of the INDIA alliance, first in Patna, and then in Bengaluru, taking a lead role in the attempts to forge unity against the BJP.
But the political bickering in Dhupguri has again cast a shadow over those efforts.
“The politics at the national level is one thing, but that does not mean the Left will go soft on the Trinamool Congress in Bengal. It is impractical to even think that we will strike any understanding keeping the Trinamool’s interests in mind,” a CPM leader told ThePrint.
“And when it comes to our fight with the Congress in Kerala, it is nothing surprising. Even during the first term of the UPA (Congress-led United Progressive Alliance), which had the Left’s support, we remained fierce rivals not just in Kerala or Tripura, but also in Bengal,” the leader added.
Apart from the BJP, the CPM and the Congress will also skip the meeting called by the TMC to decide on West Bengal Foundation Day on 29 August
‘Opposition’s strategy is not clear’
For the two Tripura bypolls, the CPM has the support of the Congress, yet challenges remain as the BJP is reportedly wooing the TIPRA Motha to garner tribal votes.
TIPRA Motha is formally not a constituent of the INDIA alliance but is the main opposition party in the state along with the CPM and the Congress.
To understand the Motha’s importance in Tripura, consider this: in Dhanpur, which was won by the BJP by a margin of 3,500 votes in the assembly polls this year, Motha had got 8,671 votes, EC data showed.
Boxanagar had gone to the CPM by a margin of 4,849 votes, but the Motha could have played spoilsport even there, as its candidate tallied 3,010 votes.
While the Motha, founded by royal scion Pradyot Debbarma, has not fielded candidates on these seats this time, Debbarma has not endorsed the Opposition candidates either. Instead, he met Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah last Saturday, ostensibly over the pending resolution of the Greater Tipraland issue.
Even before Debbarma made it public, BJP’s Northeast in-charge Sambit Patra posted a picture of the meeting, making it evident that the BJP was keen on cashing in on the development electorally.
Assam CM and North-East Democratic Alliance convener Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote in response: “This is indeed very encouraging. I am sure that under the leadership of Hon’ble Home Minister Amit Shah, a lasting solution to the problems faced by the indigenous communities of Tripura will be found.”
Speaking to ThePrint, a senior TIPRA Motha leader said: “The Opposition’s strategy is not clear. They are keeping quiet for the sake of the tie-up at the national level, but even the Congress is upset over the way the CPM announced the names of candidates (for Dhanpur and Boxanagar) unilaterally, even as alliance talks were underway.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)