‘Don’t jump the gun’; Sitaram Yechury pours ice on Opposition front

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, April 13: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his entourage consisting of Bihar-based leaders spiced up the political circle in the national capital with Opposition unity plank ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. For Kumar, such an Opposition plank may seem doable in Bihar, but he was given a reality test by the CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury.

“Congress and the Left parties contest against each other in Kerala. How can there be a front before the Lok Sabha elections. A front of the Opposition parties can only be possible after the elections,” said Yechury in the national capital.

Yet, Yechury underlined the urgency for the Opposition parties to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagging a third straight mandate on a trot. Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah has already run the poll bell by giving a clarion call to the party workers in a rally in Dibrugarh in Assam to aim for another 300 plus seats in the Lok Sabha.

“Don’t jump the gun,” shot back Yechury to the persistent media queries on the Opposition unity front ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. He, however, stressed that efforts have to be made to ensure that a party “winning just 37 per cent of the vote share” doesn’t come back to power.

While Yechury indeed is right that Congress and the Left parties cannot be allies in Kerala to have pre-poll alliance, he dropped enough hints to suggest that an informal pact could be the way out of competing turf knot among the constituents of the Opposition. Incidentally, Congress and the Left had formal alliance in the just concluded Tripura Assembly elections. Congress and the Left also are partners in the ruling alliance in Bihar.

Congress and the Left had also struck an informal alliance in West Bengal for the Assembly elections. But, political observers concur, that Yechury’s task of stopping a party winning just 37 per cent votes from coming to the power looks daunting, as those who share the rest of the 63 per cent votes are fragmented and some of them don’t see eye to eye, which includes the likes of Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, Bharat Rashtra Samiti Telanagna, YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh and others.

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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