Sunil Kumar Pintu, a Member of Parliament from Janata Dal-United (JDU), the party of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, has declared the meeting of the INDIA alliance inconclusive and utter failure. He stated on Wednesday that no decision was reached in the opposition parties’ meeting that was held in Delhi.
“All the opposition leaders at the INDI meeting anticipated a tangible outcome, but this gathering also ended without substantial results. In the past, these meetings used to include tea and samosas. But yesterday, the Congress party said they were facing financial constraints and requested everyone to contribute either Rs 138, Rs 1380, or Rs 13,800 to support them. Consequently, yesterday’s meeting was limited to just tea and biscuits, and the samosas didn’t make the cut,” Pintu said.
JDU सांसद सुनील कुमार पिंटू का बड़ा बयान। I.N.D.I. अलायंस की बैठक को बताया टांय-टांय फिस्स। pic.twitter.com/saHVMze4bJ
— News18 Bihar (@News18Bihar) December 20, 2023
Sunil Kumar Pintu serves as a JDU MP from the Sitamarhi Lok Sabha seat.
The statement by JDU MP came days after Congress launched an online crowdsourcing campaign, ‘Donate for Desh’, asking its supporters to donate money to the grand old party. However, the campaign provided yet another instance of the Congress party’s famed incompetence, for they forgot to book the domain before launching the campaign. The BJP booked one of the domains while the other one was acquired by OpIndia, clicking on which took one to their respective donation pages.
Earlier yesterday, several opposition leaders assembled in New Delhi for the INDI Alliance meeting to discuss the future strategy to take on the BJP in the upcoming general elections in 2024. The focus of the meeting was to zero in on the PM candidate for the alliance and to fast-track the seat-sharing discussion for the Lok Sabha elections.
Initially set for December 6, the meeting was rescheduled due to the unavailability of key leaders, including Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of Bihar, and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s name was proposed by alliance members, most notably by TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the INDI Alliance. Kharge, however, has refused to be the alliance’s PM face, stating that the opposition should first focus on winning the election and wait for the results before arriving at their PM nominee.
As per reports, the Trinamool Congress Party and several other alliance partners set December 31 as the deadline for the seat-sharing talks, which has been an Achilles heel from the start, given the competing interests among the opposition parties to be a part of an alliance with other opposition parties but simultaneously expand their political sphere of influence beyond their respective regions.
