New Delhi: The INDIA alliance in its first coordination committee meeting decided to come up with a list of news anchors whose shows will be boycotted by the member parties. Ever since the alliance took shape, the leaders have spoken about “unprecedented hostility” faced by opposition parties during the Narendra Modi regime. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had indicated in Bengaluru and Mumbai meetings that a strategy to counter propagandist media will be discussed among INDIA bloc constituents.
The first coordination committee, thus, authorised the media sub-committee formed after the Mumbai meeting to name and boycott television anchors who have been allegedly hostile to opposition parties.
Speaking on behalf of all the 12 parties which participated in the coordination committee meeting, Congress’s general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal said, “The coordination committee authorised the sub-group of media to decide upon the names of anchors on whose shows none of the INDIA parties will send their representations.”
Chaddha also said that a recommendation in this regard had come from the INDIA alliance’s media sub-group.
“There was a recommendation from our media sub group that there are certain anchors who conduct inflammatory debates in the country, so the INDIA alliance will put out a notification and stop going to such shows,” he told ANI.
The first round of seat-sharing discussions, which are likely to be complex and heated, was also held at the meeting. Venugopal said that seat-sharing talks between the 26 parties of INDIA bloc will be finalised “at the earliest”. Importantly, he said that the alliance will take up the issue of caste census in the country, in what is a likely hint at the possibility of a consensus between all the INDIA constituents on the issue.
Caste census
In Mumbai, the issue of caste census was conspicuously absent from the political resolution passed by the INDIA bloc.
Some reports had hinted at the All India Trinamool Congress’s (TMC’s) indecisiveness about the issue as the primary reason the caste census was not mentioned in the political resolution. The Congress and most other regional parties, especially the socialist parties like the Samajwadi Party (SP), Janata Dal (United)(JDU), and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), have already been campaigning in favour of conducting a pan-India caste census.
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Last month, ahead of the third INDIA meeting in Mumbai, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had said that its state-level caste census has already been completed and the final report should come out soon. Other opposition parties are also likely to join the fray in demanding a caste census – an issue that can become an Achilles’ heel for the Modi government, which has remained indecisive about it.
When asked whether all INDIA parties are on board with the caste census, Venugopal said that the decision was taken by the representatives present at the meeting. “Those who are present here decided these things, we are going to talk to others also,” he said.
‘Misuse of investigative agencies’
The Wednesday (September 13) meeting was held at NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s residence in New Delhi and saw twelve representatives of the 26 party-alliance in attendance.
This included-Sharad Pawar (NCP), KC Venugopal (Congress), TR Balu (DMK), Tejasvi Yadav (RJD), Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena-Uddhav Thackeray), Sanjay Jha (JDU), Hemant Soren (JMM), Raghav Chaddha (AAP), D Raja (CPI), Omar Abdullah (National Conference), Mehbooba Mufti (PDP), and Javed Ali (Samajwadi Party).
TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee could not attend the meeting as he was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Kolkata.
Venugopal took the opportunity to highlighting the absence of Abhishek Banerjee to advance the INDIA bloc’s consistent criticism of Modi government’s alleged misuse of investigation agencies against opposition leaders. “Shree Abhishek Banerjee could not attend the meeting because he was summoned by the ED – arising out of the vendetta politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the prime minister,” he said.
Banerjee appeared before the ED in connection with the probe agency’s investigation into the school jobs scam in the state.
Earlier on Wednesday, the party shared a photo on X (formerly Twitter) and said: “The truth? THEY are scarED.”
The truth?
THEY are scarED. pic.twitter.com/6BsxmQQXh2
— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) September 13, 2023
In another post the party said that Banerjee will not be “cowed down by the oppressive forces’ intimidation tactics.”
First joint rally
Speaking to reporters later, Abdullah said that he had highlighted that the focus should be on seat sharing arrangements where INDIA parties are not seat holders.
“One of the things that I had proposed and something that we will have to discuss is that seats that are already held by members of the INDIA bloc should not be open for discussion. We should be discussing seats that are held by the BJP or the NDA or parties that are not part of either of those alliances. Because the seats that are held by INDIA members should not come under discussion unless the party that holds them is willing to surrender a seat,” he said.
The alliance also decided to hold its first joint rally in Bhopal, the capital of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, in the first week of October where it will highlight the issues of “price rise, unemployment and BJP’s rampant corruption.”