Lok Sabha election 2024: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has said that if parties in the I.N.D.I.A bloc want to contest election separately then they should officially announce it. With just a couple of months left for the Lok Sabha elections, seat-sharing has not been finalised among members of the Opposition's alliance.
Jairam Ramesh, who is accompanying Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra which entered Bihar, made a statement saying, "Till now things have not been finalised on our end. In an alliance, all members should speak in one voice. One-sided decisions cannot be taken... There are three parties in the I.N.D.I.A alliance. If all these three want to fight separately, they should officially announce this. Till now we are considering that the alliance will fight together in West Bengal as well..."
Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister has already made it clear that her party would contest independently from all the 42 constituencies in West Bengal in the Lok Sabha elections scheduled this year, a post mortem has started on the factors that prompted the TMC-Congress bonhomie to turn murky.
Now, while quoting the term “TMC-Congress bonhomie,” political observers have also explained that this concept of sociability was not an overall factor between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress.
Rather, this sociability was more a personal bond between Mamata Banerjee and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi as well as some other national leaders of the country’s oldest national party like Abhishek Manu Singhvi, P Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh.
Where the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) is concerned, political observers say, the equation of the Chief Minister with almost all state Congress leaders, especially the party’s state President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, was always acrimonious.
Meanwhile in Bihar, in a sudden turn of events, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar decided to part ways with the I.N.D.I.A bloc as he dumped the alliance with RJD, and formed the government with BJP once again.
A day after Nitish Kumar ditched the 'Mahagathbandhan' to return to the BJP-led NDA, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh claimed that the JD(U) supremo's exit will have "absolutely no impact" on the opposition bloc I.N.D.I.A.
Interacting with reporters in Kishanganj during the Congress' 'Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra', Ramesh mocked Kumar, saying 'Aaya Kumar, Gaya Kumar'.
Speaking on Kumar allying with the BJP-led NDA, he said, "It will not have any impact on the I.N.D.I.A bloc... absolutely no impact. This is typical of Nitish Kumar. It is not 'Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram', it is 'Aaya Kumar, Gaya Kumar'."
The Congress leader also alleged that "Kumar's betrayal" was "masterminded by the prime minister".
"When 'Bharat Jodo Nayay Yatra' started on January 14 from Manipur's Thoubal, PM Modi found the 'muhurat' to sway Milind Deora from the Congress so that the headlines become 'Milind Deora' instead of 'Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra'," he alleged.
"They (BJP) were stressed with Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra's entry to Bihar. So, they asked the 'flipping master' (referring to Nitish Kumar) to do a flip... and he did that," he said.
Ramesh claimed that the Congress received a tremendous response from the people of Kishanganj after the 'Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra' reached the district this morning.
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