New Delhi, India – Over the weekend, a popular joke on Indian social media featured 72-year-old Nitish Kumar, nine-time chief minister of the eastern Indian state of Bihar.
Kumar's Janata Dal (United) party, or simply JD(U), had been part of the INDIA opposition bloc, a group of more than two dozen political groups hoping to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi (BJP) in the national elections between March and May.
But on Sunday he broke away and instead joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of parties led by the BJP. He resigned as prime minister and then was sworn in again, this time with his new partners, all within hours.
The joke (when translated) went: “Nitish Kumar is the only PM who, though he is PM, resigns as PM so that he can remain PM.”
The BJP and its allies might well be laughing. Two months before nearly a billion Indians vote to elect their next government, Kumar's departure from the INDIA alliance is a blow to the opposition's chances of challenging Modi, who is seeking a third term as prime minister. He also reveals deeper fissures in the opposition alliance.
Also last week, Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the neighboring state of West Bengal and leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party, withdrew from the alliance, led by India's main opposition party, the Congress. Apart from Congress, the alliance is mainly made up of regional and state parties.
Both Banerjee and Kumar cited differences with the Congress over their exit from the alliance. The main bone of contention: who can contest how many of the country's 543 parliamentary seats.
Congress vs regional parties
The INDIA bloc hopes to take advantage of India's first-past-the-post electoral system by fielding a joint opposition candidate against the BJP and the NDA in all parliamentary constituencies. Opposition parties argue that such a move would ensure that anti-BJP votes are consolidated and not divided among various opposition players.
But reaching agreement on consensus candidates is easier said than done.
“The accusations being made by all the regional parties is that the Congress is trying to put a lot of pressure on them and demand a larger number of seats than they should get,” Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst and psephologist, told Al Jazeera.
This claim was corroborated by KC Tyagi, general secretary of the JD(U). Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said the Congress was interested in occupying the political space but did not want to cede space to regional parties.
“In states where Congress is strong, they do not give up even one seat. And then in states where regional parties are strong, they want a disproportionate number of seats,” Tyagi said. “It's not just us, but all the members of the alliance feel uncomfortable with them.”
Similarly, TMC's Banerjee, announcing her decision to break with the alliance, cited a failure in seat-sharing talks with the Congress as one of the reasons for going to the polls alone.
What has also irritated the TMC and the JD(U) is that Rahul Gandhi, a Congress MP and scion of the Gandhi family that has led the party for decades, has embarked on a journey from the east to the west of the country, without consult them properly.
The journey is called Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which loosely translates as Uniting India through the Justice March, a sequel to Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra last year, where he walked more than 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) from the south to the north of India.
Both Banerjee and Nitish Kumar said they were not asked about the route of the yatra passing through the states they rule. The JD(U) further said that instead of a Congress program – which only builds Gandhi's image – the party should have organized a nationwide program under the flag of INDIA.
The alliance members also accuse Congress of delaying seat-sharing talks. Over the past year, Congress has won provincial elections in the crucial southern state of Karnataka and the mountainous northern state of Himachal Pradesh. While this gave the party (and India's opposition) some momentum against Modi, the defeats in the three crucial northern Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in December were a blow to the Congress.
Banerjee and Kumar have said that the Congress postponed seat-sharing talks in the hope of winning those three states where it was in a one-on-one contest with the BJP. A victory in these states would have put Congress in a better negotiating position in the alliance.
INDIA vs INDIA
The alliance also faces a challenge in states like Punjab and Kerala, where INDIA's partners are the main rivals and the BJP has a negligible presence.
In Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an INDIA constituency, is the ruling party and the Congress is the main opposition party. The AAP also runs the government in the national capital territory of Delhi.
Similarly, in Kerala, the Left Front rules the state, while the Congress is in the opposition.
As Banerjee and Kumar walked out last week, Punjab AAP Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann announced that his party will act alone in the state and will not ally with the Congress.
Officially, however, the AAP says that while seat talks in Punjab are a work in progress, it has reached a preliminary understanding with the Congress in some other states, including Delhi.
“We have had two meetings with Congress that were attended by its senior leaders. We had a very constructive dialogue with them and discussed some of the states,” Saurabh Bharadwaj, AAP spokesperson and legislator in Delhi, told Al Jazeera. “We will close the discussion soon.”
“With regard to Punjab, our state unit is not very interested in forming an alliance. But we have not yet answered our final call,” he added.
Negotiating the interests of the state units with those of the party's central leadership in Delhi is a challenge faced by the Congress and other regional parties in the alliance.
However, there are some states where seat-sharing talks are moving forward. Akhilesh Yadav, chief of the Samajwadi Party (SP), the main opposition party in the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, announced that he would be willing to let the Congress fight for 11 of the state's 80 parliamentary seats.
SP spokesperson Ashutosh Verma told Al Jazeera that under the alliance rules, INDIA's partner with the most influence in a state would make decisions on seat sharing in that state.
Verma also noted that in states like Punjab, where INDIA's partners rank first and second, the alliance was planning to wage a “tactical fight”.
“In one of the alliance meetings it was decided that in the states of Punjab and Kerala [election] It would be fought in a similar way. These are the states where the BJP is at number three or number four. In these states, we do not want the BJP to be the main opposition. That is our strategy,” Verma said.
'Bad optics'
Al Jazeera reached out to Congress for comment on the allegations made by its INDIA partners, but had not yet received a response.
At a press conference on Saturday, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh admitted that the exits of Banerjee and Kumar were a bad image for INDIA.
“The situation could be better… The optics… people are watching. News is coming that a party is leaving and will form a government with the BJP, that another party is not happy with us… it doesn't look good. It is not good for INDIA’s image,” Ramesh said.
However, he added that the party has not lost hope in the alliance.
Sanjay Kumar, the political analyst, said the BJP would benefit from the split in the alliance. In Bihar, the JD(U)-led government had carried out a statewide caste census that the INDIA alliance hoped to present as an electoral platform, in effect promising the prospect of greater affirmative action for people belonging to various castes lower classes, known collectively as the OBC (Other Backward Class).
“The BJP will benefit from the new change that Nitish Kumar has made. It will be much easier for the BJP to mobilize OBC votes now compared to the past,” he said. “Nitish Kumar was the leader who took credit for conducting the caste census. Now that he has switched sides, the BJP can claim that credit,” he added.
In West Bengal, Kumar said, a three-way contest between the TMC, the Congress-Left alliance and the BJP will help Modi's party.
The BJP, however, has ruled out the prospects of an opposition alliance, with or without fissures within it.
“We never took this alliance seriously,” said BJP spokesperson RP Singh. He referred to how the party won 303 seats out of 543 in the 2019 parliamentary elections. This time, he said, the party is aiming for 350 seats.
And while elections might be approaching now, the BJP, he said, had been “working on this for two years”.
“Alliance or no alliance, it does not affect the BJP.”
