First meeting of INDIA bloc coordination committee remains inconclusive over seat sharing issue

The first meeting of the coordination committee of the INDIA bloc opposition on Wednesday remained inconclusive in New Delhi over the issue of seat sharing and local adjustment ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Reports ETV Bharat's Gautam Debroy.

New Delhi: "The coordination committee decided to start the process for determining seat sharing. It was decided that the member parties will hold the talks and decide at the earliest," said Congress leader and a member of the coordination committee KC Venugopal after the meeting here on Wednesday.

The meeting of the coordination committee that took place at Sharad Pawar's residence on 6 Janpath was attended by 12 members excluding the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Communist Party of India (CPI-Marxist).

TMC's Abhishek Banerjee was absent from the meeting following the fact that he was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a case related to West Bengal. CPM sources said that the party will announce the name of its member for the coordination committed after its politburo meeting scheduled to be held on September 16 and 17.
Although almost all the party leaders reached Pawar's residence at 4:15 p.m., Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leaders reached the meeting venue half an hour later.

Venugopal said that Abhishek Banerjee of All India Trinamool Congress could not attend the meeting due to a summon by the ED, arising out of the "vendetta politics" of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The parties present in the meeting agreed to take up the issue of caste census. "Yes, all the parties present in the meeting agreed to take up the caste census issue," Communist Party of India (CPI) national secretary and coordination committee member D Raja told ETV Bharat.

The committee decided to hold joint public meetings in different parts of the country. "The first public meeting will be held at Bhopal in the first week of October on the issues of rising prices, unemployment and corruption of BJP Government," Raja said.

The coordination committee authorised the sub-group on media to decide upon the names of the anchors on whose shows none of the INDIA parties will send their representatives. The first meeting of the coordination committee was attended by Sharad Pawar of NCP, KC Venugopal (Congress), TR Balu (DMK), Tejasvi Yadav (RJD), Sanjay Raut, SS (UBT), Sanjay Jha, JD (U), Hemant Soren (JMM), Raghav Chaddha (AAP), D Raja (CPI), Omar Abdullah (J&K NC), Mehbooba Mufti (PDP) and Javed Ali (SP).