Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and NCP leader Sharad Pawar at the opposition meet, in Bengaluru on July 17, 2023. (Pic/PTI)
In fact, there are 246 such Lok Sabha seats where at least two constituents of this opposition alliance clashed
At Bengaluru, where a catchy acronym was coined by the opposition, the slogan was loud and clear: “United we stand”. Aam Aadmi Party convener Arvind Kejriwal, who vowed in 2013 not to align with either the Bharatiya Janata Party or Congress, was seen smiling with Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah. Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, whose party has accused the Trinamool Congress of perpetrating violence on its cadres in West Bengal, was seen in deep conversation with TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee. The larger picture, it was insisted, was reaching a unified front at the national level. But data from the 2019 Lok Sabha polls suggests these INDIA parties actually fought tooth and nail among each other.
There are 246 such parliamentary seats across the country where at least two INDIA parties battled each other in the previous general election, often indulging in an acrimonious war of words. There are 107 such constituencies where three INDIA parties fought against each other in 2019.
But that’s not all. There are 19 Lok Sabha seats where at least four such parties indulged in an electoral clash last time. And there are three such constituencies where at least five political outfits that are now part of the ‘united’ INDIA fought among each other in 2019.
The data though does not consider the electoral fights of the losing candidates of the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) due to the fluid situation of their allegiances.
However, there are 267 such seats where none of these parties fought against each other.
Now, with the initial phase of naming the alliance being over and the opposition moving towards forming a common minimum programme, what will be interesting to see is the seat-sharing agreement. If this 2019 data is anything to suggest, none of these parties will be willing to cede ground from areas they fought, however unsuccessfully, in 2019, and therefore have an organisation and cadre base.
While the BJP won 303 seats with a 37.7% vote share and formed the government in 2019, the Congress just managed to get 52 seats and garner a little less than a 10% vote share. It was followed by the DMK and TMC.