A deserted view of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) premises amid the counting of votes for the Delhi Assembly polls, in New Delhi, on February 8, 2025.
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) defeat and the Congress’s failure in resurrecting itself in the Delhi elections have raised further challenges for the already-faltering INDIA bloc. There is a growing impatience with the Congress and many allies have accused it of contributing to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had earlier called for disbanding of the bloc, was the first one to react on Saturday morning. In a post at 9.15 a.m. on X, even as the early trends were coming in, he blamed the fight between the allies for the outcome.
In a direct attack on the Congress, senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Ramgopal Yadav said the Congress campaigned for the BJP’s victory in Delhi. Communist Party of India general secretary D. Raja said the results were a wake-up call for the constituents of the INDIA bloc, particularly the Congress, the largest party in the coalition, and other dominant regional parties. The poll outcome, he added, “serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of disunity among secular democratic forces.”
Many of the constituents chose to remain silent, such as the Trinamool Congress which has been a strident critic of the Congress and the only party in the bloc not to have an electoral alliance with the grand old party.
Senior Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj K. Jha, called the poll result a “small episode” in the long electoral history of India. He said it will have no impact on the INDIA bloc. “The core idea of the INDIA bloc was to offer an alternative to the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and we have been fairly successful in doing just that by reducing the overwhelming majority of the BJP. Every political party is entitled to expand its footprint,” he said.
The AAP and the Congress have been uneasy allies. Its entry into the Opposition bloc was resisted by the Congress, which refused to invite it for long for the Opposition’s coordination meetings in Parliament.
Alternating between public rebukes and backroom negotiations, the CPI(M)‘s late general secretary Sitaram Yechury and the Trinamool worked as emissaries to iron out this difficult relationship. AAP was invited to the first meeting of the INDIA bloc in Patna in July 2023. The meeting gave a platform to the party to reach out to the Congress. Arvind Kejriwal, thenDelhi Chief Minister, had pleaded with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to meet him. Mr. Kejriwal revealed in public what he had spoken behind closed doors. Despite this, the meeting never happened till very late.
To the utter unease of the Delhi unit, the two parties teamed up for the Lok Sabha elections, an arrangement that did not extend to Punjab. They tried to reach an electoral understanding in the Haryana Assembly polls. In Delhi, to the relief of the Congress’s Delhi unit, AAP announced that it would contest the election alone.
The INDIA bloc has not met since the Lok Sabha results. The fragmentation in the bloc that came to the fore after the consecutive defeats in Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections is expected exacerbate further. In the run-up to the Delhi election, the bloc saw several allies, including the SP and the Trinamool, aligning with the AAP against the Congress. In an alternative opinion, many feel that AAP’s defeat would discourage the attempts to form a third pole without the Congress.
Published – February 08, 2025 09:17 pm IST
