INDIA Bloc Unites to Stop the Modi Jaggaurnat

 

INDIA Bloc Unites to Stop the Modi Jaggaurnat

On June 8,2026, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), representing 25 opposition political parties, met at the Constitution Club, New Delhi. The meeting couldn’t have come at a worse time for the national Opposition, against the backdrop of country-wide concerns related to economic distress, inflation and the chaos in the educational sector.  It was the first meeting after the 2024 general election that reduced the strength of the BJP to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha, forcing Narendra Modi to head a coalition government, with the support of the NDA allies. The gains made in 2024 have all but evaporated, a large swath of the country coming under the BJP rule than ever before, mainstays of the Opposition coalition such as MK Stalin or Mamata Banerjee have been humbled at the hustings.

 

The meeting, among others, was attended by Sonia Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Tejaswi Yadav, John Brittas, and Supriya Sule, while Udhav Thackery and Hemant Soren participated online. Rahul Gandhi asked the parties to unite to fight against the BJP. He said that the Congress and INDIA bloc are on one side and on the other side are the BJP and the RSS who never took part in India’s freedom struggle.  J&K Chief Minister Omar Abduah, who participated in the meeting, struck an optimistic note: “The introspection has to be done collectively. We have actually achieved something big. Let’s not sit in this room looking gloomy.  Last time we sat there was no minority government. Now we have reduced Narendra Modi’s government to a minority government. Let us look ahead for 2029 and let us acknowledge that the Congress is the glue that holds India together.”

 

Contrary to the expectations, the INDIA bloc parties closed ranks around the Congress, realising that this was the way to save themselves from the onslaught of the BJP. There was a broad consensus among them that checkmating the BJP is essential for their political survival and to the health of Indian democracy and that the Congress remains the unavoidable pivot of any credible national, secular and progressive formation to challenge the BJP. There is even a talk of Mamata’s faction of the TMC and Sharad Pawa’s NCP merging with the Congress to avoid total decimation, after all they were the splinter groups of the Congress.  And with the three parties -Aam Aadmi Party, DMK and TMC - losing the Assembly elections in Delhi, Tamil Nandu and West Bengal, respectively, many regional leaders wanted the Congress to take the leadership position of the group.

 

At the press briefing, after the meeting, the Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge announced the consensus reached by the parties on certain issues. They have unanimously adopted a five-point plan of action:  (1)To send a letter to the Chief Justice of India, flagging concerns over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), ‘vote-loot’ and stealing elections;(2)to demand immediate resignation of the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan because he presided over the betrayal of lakhs of youth who appeared for the NEET and the CBSE examinations; (3) the Union Government should immediately call an all-party meeting to discuss the precarious current economic situation, unemployment, price rise, famers issues, atrocities  and people’s centric issues;(4) all the parties to meet every two months, next meeting to be held in Hyderabad ; and (5) parliament coordination to continue during the monsoon session with daily morning meeting as usual in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition (Kharge).

 

There is an interesting article by KS Tomar – a senior political analysist and strategic affairs columnist – in The Free Press Journal, June 9. He summed up the predicament of the opposition parties in these words: “For nearly a decade, Indian opposition politics revolved around a paradox. Parties that were expected to collectively challenge the BJP ended up weakening one another. Regional leaders who rose as powerful anti-BJP figures gradually transformed into competing centres of ambition, each attempting to dominate the opposition space without surrendering political ground to the allies. The result was fractured and distrustful structure that repeatedly failed to convert ant-incumbency into a coherent national challenge.”

 

The best example of this are leaders such as Kejriwal, Mamata, Stalin, Akilesh, Tejaswi, Thackeray, and Pawar, whose ego and personal ambition not only obstructed the emergence of a coherent national opposition to the BJP, but also got either decimated or weakened in the process.  Even in the meeting on June 8, Akilesh Yadav told the Congress to show a ‘big heart’ and be ‘accommodative’ to have larger share of seats for themselves. This is how the regional parties have been pushing the Congress to be a marginal player in elections, losing sight of the larger national issue of fighting the BJP.  

 

Tomar argues: “Ironically, the political weakening of some of these regional heavy weights may now open the possibility of rebuilding opposition unity on more stable foundations. The decline of leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal after successive political setback may ultimately strengthen the INDIA bloc.  What once appeared to be the opposition’s biggest strength – the rise of assertive regional parties – increasingly became its greatest liability because many of these formations lacked both national reach and ideological consistency. Several regional parties expected the Congress to support them in their respective states while simultaneously attempting to erase Congress politically in those very regions. Personal ambitions further complicated matters. Multiple opposition leaders projected themselves as potential prime ministerial faces without possessing broader acceptability across India. In many states, regional parties successfully reduced the Congress strength but failed to emerge as viable national alternatives. This fragmentation ultimately benefited the BJP.”

 

The BJP exploited this weakness by engineering defection, attracting disgruntled leaders and expanding the cadre network within the opposition strongholds. Amid this churn, the Congress is discovering a political opportunity that seemed unimaginable a few years ago, with structural weaking of regional parties that had consumed its political space for decades. The regional parties and regional satraps growing at the expense of the Congress is a thing of the past. As regional parties lose domination, the Congress is emerging as the only opposition party with a genuine national foot-print, acceptable to all sections of society, and capable of ousting the BJP and Modi from power at the Centre. The weakening of regional satraps represents more than the decline of individual leaders. It signals the begging of a larger political realignment wherein the Congress reclaims the central space of national opposition politics.

 

This is evident from the way Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, is conducting politics these days. He has occupied practically the entire opposition space in national politics. He attacks relentlessly the BJP-RSS-Modi juggernaut.There is not an issue that he has not spoken about. The NSUI and IYC of the Congress are on the streets across the states protesting against the price rise, paper leak resulting in cancellation of the NEET and the technical glitches in the CBSE Board examinations that destroyed the dreams of millions of students, making their future bleak, causing them and their parents mental trauma. No other opposition party or opposition leader is seen taking to streets on these issues. Rahul Gandhi meets every segment of workers, interactants with the people and then raises their issues. 

 

It is difficult to understand Ramachandra Guha’s stand that the Gandhis are a liability for the Congress and that Rahul Gandhi is not fit to be a prime ministerial candidate because they are a ‘dynast. A strange argument that shows refusal to reject the meaning of a hereditary ‘dynast’. Gandhis are not imposed on the nation through hereditary. They are the people’s choice. And without them the Congress will not survive. And without the Congress there will be no end to the Modi juggernaut. There is no other leader as Rahul Gandhi in recorded history of a democratic country who is persistently attacked, persecuted and humiliated, using the entire state machinery and the subdued media, and yet he survives to fightback single handed and remains a hope to dislodge the BJP and Modi from power. He is the only leader acceptable to all communities across the country. Guha refuses to acknowledge this reality.

 

The Nehru-Gandhi family’s history is a history of struggle, sacrifice and service for the nation. We will not find any such example in any other country. Guha is prejudiced against the Gandhi family. He doesn’t say who among other Congress leaders – Mallikarjun Kharge, KC Venugopal, Sashi Tharoor, P. Chidambaram, Ashok Gehlot, Sachin Plot and the like – is a more suitable prime ministerial candidate. Nor does he have any answer: who among the opposition leaders- Kehriwal, Mamata, Pawar, Nitish Kumar. Stalin, Akilesh, Tejaswi - is fit to be a Prime Ministerial face. He has no solution to the Modi’s authoritarian dictatorial regime either.

 

On June 9, at a press conference, the chairman of the All-India Congress Committee’s Research Department, Rajeev Gowda, released a 75-page ‘promise versus reality’ document to mark the second year of the third term of the Modi government. Some of the highlights of the documents, reported in The Hindu, June 10, are very unsettling:

 

“Under Prime Minister Modi the rupee is the worst performing currency in Asia. Over the last 12 years, promises have been accompanied by big announcements, grand statements, and headiness. But the reality is that none of these headlines actually translate into anything that is meaningfully transforming the lives of the people. Four out of 10 graduates remain unemployed…only 7% of unemployed graduates had secured a permanent salaried job...India’s ranking in the Global Gender Gap Index had fallen from 108 to 131…MSME sector…nearly 40,000 enterprises had shut down in the prevous financial year. Narendra Modi had claimed that India would become the world’s third largest economy and reach a 5 trillion-dollar economy by 2024. But the reality today is that economy has fallen below 4 trillion dollar and India has slipped to the sixth largest economy.”    

 

It is a positive step that the INDIA bloc unites to stop the Modi juggernaut.