a 19 opposition parties meeting on 20 August reaffirmed the sense of urgency that they feel to come together and form a united front against the BJP. It was also a demonstration of the challenges they face in that work, in terms of program and architecture. Leaders of 18 other parties, including four chief ministers, attended the meeting called by Congress President Sonia Gandhi. These parties have strategic or ideological reasons to be part of a formation against the hegemony of the BJP, and there is no harm in forging an alliance with the Congress in the process. All 19 parties see the BJP as a threat to their politics; Some of them also see it as a threat to the constitutional values of the country. There are other non-BJP parties which do not see it that way. The BJD, TRS and YSRCP, the ruling parties in Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh respectively, see no advantage in opposing the BJP or forming an alliance with the Congress. They can also see that enmity with BJP and affinity with Congress is harmful to their politics. In comparison, Uttar Pradesh has two influential parties, the BSP and the SP, which elect the largest number of Lok Sabha MPs. Ms Gandhi has called on all parties to rise above compulsion to form a united front against the BJP, which aims to defeat the BJP in the 2024 general election.
The fact is that the Congress itself is a prisoner of its own compulsions and rigidities such as its institutional animosity towards the YSRCP and TRS, and the personal fantasies of its leader Rahul Gandhi, who holds all authority and no accountability. Additionally, today’s Congress is much lower than its position in the 2004 general election, when it could have brought many parties under coalition. Regional leaders then avoided Ms. Gandhi, and her command over the Congress was absolute. The chaos in the Congress leadership is a strain on the opposition unity efforts. There is also a huge gap between these parties in identifying the most important issues in designing the optimal campaign against the BJP. Congress and the Left want to lead in any opposition campaign, the use of spyware by an unknown government entity to spy on multiple individuals. Parties that think more rural tend to hold more importance among voters about price rises and agrarian distress and unemployment. This deviation is not necessarily disabling for the opposition. In fact, different parties can appeal and consolidate their strengths in different constituencies, as was the case in the UPA experiments between 2004 and 2014. This requires far more leadership and management skills than today in the opposition gallery.
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