New Delhi: Tuesday’s Vice-Presidential election once again exposed the inherent contradiction within the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
According to pre-poll calculations, the INDIA bloc candidate, retired Justice Sudershan Reddy, was expected to get 315 votes if all its members participated in the process.
Reddy got 300. Considering that all the 15 votes that were declared invalid were from the opposition ranks, how did National Democratic Alliance’s C.P. Radhakrishnan secure over a dozen more votes than expected?
It is clear that the INDIA bloc suffered cross-voting and invalid ballots — a symptom of poor discipline. Additionally, its leadership failed to influence parties like Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi of Telangana.
Among a few others who abstained, these two parties prefer to “keep equal distance” from both the political blocs.
Thus, the logic of an anti-NDA bloc being an agreement only at the national level also doesn’t stand.
Not that it was for the first time. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chose to contest Delhi seats in alliance with the Congress, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal decided to go alone.
In Kerala, the Left Democratic Front can’t be expected to join hands with the Congress-led United Democratic Front. But in West Bengal, the Left joined the Congress to challenge Mamata Banerjee in the state, and Narendra Modi at the Centre.
Every regional satrap pursues political ambitions. Thus, there will be roadblocks in ceding ground to any other party. Incidentally, most of the regional parties in North India have broken away from the Congress, which makes them “unnatural” allies of the Grand Old Party.
The only common thread binding them together is an aim to somehow arrest the BJP juggernaut.
Now AAP too has officially announced its exit from the INDIA bloc, declaring its intention to contest the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections independently. The current political equation in Bihar stays precariously balanced against the Opposition bloc.
The newly-formed Jan Suraj Party of Prashant Kishor also intends to take on the state’s coalition government of the BJP and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Party (United) alone.
Hyderabad MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi recently ruled out joining the INDIA bloc. His party may hold sway in the 24 Assembly seats of the Seemanchal region, which has a considerable Muslim population.
However, the state unit of his party appears to prefer holding hands with the Opposition.
In the 2020 state polls, the AIMIM won five seats here, but four of its MLAs rebelled and joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
The overall equation leads to a fragmented mandate for those against the ruling coalition in Bihar.
Therefore, bringing together parties across the political spectrum is the Opposition’s greatest liability. Unlike the NDA, which is underpinned by the BJP’s clear Hindutva-driven agenda and governance record, INDIA lacks a unifying ideology or manifesto beyond “anti-incumbency”.
This big-tent approach leaves member parties contesting under varied banners without a coherent policy platform to rally voters around.
The critical fault line is the absence of binding, nationwide seat-sharing pacts. Thus, in key states, INDIA members either field candidates against each other or fail to maximize winnable seats.
Meanwhile, the largest single constituent of the bloc, Congress, remains organisationally weak. Decades of electoral setbacks have eroded confidence, self-esteem, and ground machinery.
Rahul Gandhi, though widely recognised, has yet to galvanize other INDIA leaders into cohesive action.
The repeated reshuffling of state leadership and unclear succession planning saps Congress’s capacity to drive alliance strategy and mobilise voters effectively.
To transform the challenge into a real threat, INDIA must bind member parties through enforceable agreements, articulate a common policy platform, and elevate a unifying leadership that resonates nationally.
(IANS)
