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India’s fragmented and fractious left-of-centre opposition parties have joined forces in a rare show of unity, with the aim of unseating Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party in next year’s election.
More than two dozen parties joined the alliance, dubbed “INDIA”, or the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.
“The main aim is to stand together to safeguard democracy and the constitution,” Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Indian National Congress, the largest opposition party, said at the end of a two-day meeting of the groups in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
The parties vowed to “stand together to safeguard the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution” at a time when watchdog groups say the country’s pluralist culture, civil society and media are under the increasingly powerful sway of the Hindu nationalist BJP.
Modi will be seeking re-election to a third term next year at a time when India’s prominence as a global diplomatic and economic power is rising, but its growing economy is struggling with climbing unemployment.
The BJP has been increasing pre-election attacks on its rivals as it seeks to defend its parliamentary majority against an opposition led by Congress. The parties are likely to attack the BJP on its economic record and other domestic problems, including a violent conflict in the north-eastern state of Manipur.
“The character of our republic is being severely assaulted in a systematic manner by the BJP,” the opposition group said in a statement on Tuesday.
Twenty-six parties have joined the alliance, including Congress; the Aam Aadmi party, which controls governments in the northern Punjab state and Delhi; and the All India Trinamool Congress, a powerful regional party in West Bengal.
Indians joked online about the INDIA acronym, with many seeing it as a clever ploy to play the nationalist card against the BJP. “BJP, can you challenge INDIA,” Mamata Banerjee, Trinamool’s leader said.
However, analysts said the new alliance would face long odds against the BJP, which won a majority in parliament in 2014 and 2019 and is widely expected to win again in the upcoming vote scheduled for April and May of 2024.
Past efforts by the opposition to unite against Modi-led BJP governments have failed because the parties are direct rivals in state governments.
The BJP this week organised a meeting of its own National Democratic Alliance, composed of 38 other parties it sees as allies.
“Today the opposition has acquired a reputation for calling us names and to humiliate us,” Modi told a meeting of the BJP-led alliance on Tuesday. “But the NDA has always kept the interest of the country above politics.”
In its mission statement, INDIA pledged to “confront the grave economic crisis of ever-rising prices of essential commodities and record unemployment”, signalling a likely line of attack by the opposition groups on Modi’s economic record in the upcoming campaign.
Congress toppled a BJP local government in a state election in Karnataka in May, denting the ruling party’s image of invincibility.
“The opposition gains strength from the formation of the alliance, but in my opinion, even this alliance is no guarantee to winning elections in 2024 for the opposition,” said Sanjay Kumar, political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. However, he added: “It makes the election more competitive for 2024.”
