New Delhi: The INDIA alliance’s highest decision-making body met for the first time Wednesday and decided to start the ball rolling on seat-sharing ahead of the upcoming state polls and next year’s general elections.
Member parties will hold talks and decide at the earliest on this, Congress leader K.C. Venugopal said after the Opposition bloc’s coordination committee meeting at Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar’s residence in Delhi.
The meeting of the 14-member panel was attended by 12 parties Wednesday, he informed.
Missing from discussions was West Bengal chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, who faced the Enforcement Directorate in Kolkata over his alleged role in the school recruitment scam.
The committee also decided to hold joint public meetings in different parts of the country. “The first meeting will be held in Bhopal in the first week of October on the issues of rising prices, unemployment and corruption of the BJP government. Parties present today have also agreed to take up the issue of caste census,” Venugopal said.
The alliance’s media wing will also decide the “names of (television news) anchors on whose shows none of the INDIA parties will send their representatives”.
VIDEO | "All (INDIA) alliance parties will participate in the public meeting (to be held in Bhopal) and raise issues of price rise, unemployment and corruption. There was also consensus over caste census. We have also authorised our media committee to release the list of TV… pic.twitter.com/wbu12BsiR1
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 13, 2023
On the business of seat sharing, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah proposed that those already held by allies “should not be open for discussion”. “We should discuss those seats that are held by either the BJP or the NDA or parties that are not part of either of those alliances,” Abdullah said after the meeting.
The coordination committee was formed in the third meeting of the Opposition in Mumbai earlier this month. The first two meetings were in Patna and Bengaluru.
The panel has a sitting chief minister, Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren, and two heads of parties — NCP’s Sharad Pawar, and Mehbooba Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
All other parties represented in the coordination committee — such as the Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Trinamool Congress (TMC), Samajwadi Party (SP), Janata Dal (United), National Conference (NC), Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) — have the lieutenants of the party chiefs on the panel.
In the third INDIA meeting in Mumbai, several non-Congress parties had made a strong pitch for talks on seat-sharing ahead of the next round of assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Rajasthan.
This push for quick seat-sharing talks led to the alliance adopting a resolution resolving “to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections together as far as possible”.
“Seat-sharing arrangements in different states will be initiated immediately and concluded at the earliest in a collaborative spirit of give-and-take,” the resolution stated.
While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) proposed that seat-sharing talks be completed by 30 September, at least two more parties suggested 15 October as the cut-off date.
Also read: PM Modi meets PMO officers, staff for debriefing on their G20 experience