INDIA ALLIANCE PARTNERS MUST SHOW MATURITY IN SEAT SHARING
By Sushil Kutty
So, ‘INDIA’ is vacillating. Home Minister Amit Shah says Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get his wish, a majority and a third term. This, when all that INDIA has to do is prevent India from voting for Modi. The Congress should get its leadership role in INDIA right. Rahul Gandhi must get real. Wanting to become a ‘tapaswi’ is the worst that can happen to man.
Even at age 53. Rahul Gandhi should sit down with every opposition leader he can collar and read them from the coalition book and give them a quick summary of the UPA experience. The AAP should be made to fall in line or booted out. The hoi polloi are looking for an alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal cannot prevent an alternative from emerging.
In fact, no opposition leader, however tall and muscular, should get the notion that he/she is bigger than the alliance INDIA. If the AAP wants to skip INDIA’s Mumbai meeting, good luck to Kejriwal, he can do whatever he fancies. But drum it into him that he is not indispensable. The Congress party’s Alka Lamba might have riled Kejriwal with her statement that the Congress would contest all 7 seven Delhi Lok Sabha seats.
But Alka Lamba is not the last word in the Congress. The 26-party INDIA will still be INDIA with 25 parties? This is the only time in nearly 10 years that the Modi-led BJP looks vulnerable and almost committed to commit hara-kiri. At this time for INDIA to develop cracks is like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The AAP’s is the only discordant note in INDIA, which is actually like giving Kejriwal the right to dismantle INDIA, why? If AAP thinks itself greater than the sum of the whole INDIA, let it go and prove itself right.
The INDIA alliance’s Mumbai meeting – likely to be held on August 31-September 1 – has to happen in spite and despite of AAP. Chief AAP spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar’s rant that being in INDIA requires the Congress to not to contest all the 7 Delhi seats is unreasonable. Her “top leadership” can take a walk. Who knows, the AAP may collapse tomorrow. The AAP is in no position to play dictator and executioner.
The end of INDIA is not linked to AAP’s presence in the alliance. Also, INDIA’s future is not for AAP to fix or predict. At stake is a lot, even the democracy that has been elusive for 10 long years. As predicted by quite a few opposition stalwarts including Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge who has a 40 year career advantage over Kejriwal. Ousting Narendra Modi cannot be left to the Kejriwals of this world, political upstarts with anarchy in their eyes. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah will wrap themselves in laughter if Arvind Kejriwal gets pole position in INDIA.
Right now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah fear Congress leader, the reinstated Wayanad Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi, more than any other INDIA leader. The optics of the Monsoon Session of Parliament clearly indicated who was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sole equal in the House of 543? Despite all the “machinations”, Rahul Gandhi couldn’t be denied his right to be witness to the last couple of sessions of a politician who claims to be both ‘Vishwaguru’ and ‘Mahamanav’ combined.
The truth is, Arvind Kejriwal and AAP cannot defeat Narendra Modi and BJP alone. Neither can Rahul Gandhi and his party Congress. That counts for every other political party in the INDIA alliance. But together, INDIA can give BJP/NDA the defeat it fears. The AAP is behaving like the 7 seats of Delhi will decide who rules India.
Alka Lamba has her own reasons to want Congress to contest all 7 Delhi seats. Her home state is Delhi and she has contested elections from Delhi. And she was in the AAP; a one-time AAP MLA. There is no love lost between Lamba and Kejriwal. But they seem to be totally unaware that defeating Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2024 is as easy as ‘1-2-ka-4’ if ‘INDIA’ ensures the Pasmanda Muslim do not vote for the BJP. Let that happen and then leave the rest to the growing number of disgruntled Hindutva – hand Modi his worst ever electoral defeat. (IPA Service)