NEW DELHI: Confronted with a decade-long electoral decline — accelerating after 2019 — the opposition regrouped under the collective banner of INDIA, promising unity and coordinated battles against the BJP. The experiment briefly worked: the bloc’s unexpectedly strong performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections rattled the ruling alliance.
Despite internal contradictions and competing ambitions, the INDIA partners found a workable formula that delivered results in Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir. But Maharashtra exposed the limits of this arrangement, with Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress functioning less as allies and more as adversaries.
Bihar was expected to be a showcase of opposition cohesion, with the RJD leading Congress, Left parties and caste-based outfits in a joint challenge to the JD(U)-BJP coalition. Instead, the alliance collapsed under its own weight — a failure that raises uncomfortable questions as the bloc now looks toward high-stakes battles in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
TMC chief Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly argued that Congress lacks electoral heft in Bengal — a stance she maintained even in 2024 when both parties contested against each other while still being part of the INDIA umbrella nationally.
Congress now faces a strategic puzzle:
Should it target the BJP or confront Mamata?
The overlap in minority voter bases makes the choice especially fraught. Congress has often accused other “secular” parties in different states of acting as the BJP’s “B-team,” a label that would be awkward in Bengal’s context.
Tamil Nadu presents a different challenge. The DMK–Congress alliance is formally intact, bolstered by warm ties between M.K. Stalin and the Congress leadership. But state Congress leaders resent what they see as DMK’s ‘domineering’ approach. They want the partnership terms renegotiated, arguing that Congress’s 8% vote share could prove decisive if an AIADMK-led opposition front gains traction.
Within the INDIA bloc, murmurs have begun over whether prolonged seat-sharing negotiations between Congress and RJD — and vice versa — delayed the Bihar campaign and weakened the joint strategy. Many within the opposition now believe Congress may have to revert to its 2024 “sacrifice mode,” conceding more space to regional allies to preserve the bloc’s cohesion.
As Bengal and Tamil Nadu approach their own electoral crossroads, the Bihar setback may force the INDIA bloc to confront a larger truth: the idea of INDIA may need reinvention or at least recalibration — if it is to remain politically credible.
