Assembly Poll Debacle Side-Effect? Top Leaders 'Unavailable', INDIA Bloc's Meeting Postponed

Is the opposition's INDIA bloc in trouble? After Congress' disappointing performance in all three states of Hindi heartland in the recent 2023 Assembly ELections - Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh - several top leaders have reportedly said that they can't attend the gathering of the opposition's INDIA bloc that is supposed to take place on December 6. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress Leader Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav and Bihar CM and Janta Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Jharkhand and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Hemant Soren - these leaders might stay away from the December 6 INDIA meeting. Now, reports say that the INDIA Bloc meeting will be deferred to December 18.

This meeting will be held after a gap of over three months since the last one in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1. Earlier, while addressing the media on Monday, the West Bengal CM said that her party was unaware that the INDIA grouping is planning to hold a sitting in New Delhi. "I don't know, I have no information so I kept a programme in North Bengal...If we had the information, we wouldn't have scheduled those programmes. We would have definitely gone (for the meeting), but we have not received any information," TMC chief had said, as reported by ANI.

According to sources, Akhilesh Yadav might also give the December 6 meeting a miss. Nitish Kumar, reports say, had cited viral fever as the reason behind giving the meeting a miss.

Ahead of the next meeting, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has dialled his alliance partners and invited them to converge. Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction) leader Supriya Sule gave a hint after the Mumbai meeting that the next meeting will be held in the national capital. Seat sharing for the Lok Sabha polls, which are just four to five months away, is likely to be at the top of the agenda. The next INDIA bloc meeting would also be crucial for Congress, particularly as the party lost Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, the Hindi heartland states that send a large number of members to the Parliament.

However, the Congress could find the going tough in this meeting, with key ally Samajwadi Party having struck a beligerent tone against the Congress in the assembly elections. SP boss Akhilesh Yadav had accused the Congress of betraying the SP by not giving it tickets to contest in a potential alliance with the Congress in MP.