Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday said the Opposition INDIA bloc was “on life support” and had to decide whether it was a proper national alliance or a loose group of state-based parties, the Hindustan Times reported.
Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi, the National Conference leader claimed the Opposition alliance was struggling to keep pace with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s "unparalleled election machine”.
He argued that the Opposition must work together and make joint decisions if it wants to challenge the ruling party, highlighting that the Bihar Assembly election results showed how fragile the bloc had become.
Abdullah contended that the Opposition’s handling of internal disagreements had pushed Janata Dal (United leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ‘back into the arms” of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
He referred to discussions in which Kumar was present but was effectively denied a key role in the INDIA bloc, and said that excluding the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha from Bihar seat-sharing talks was another sign of poor coordination.
When asked whether the alliance was dead, he said that it was “sort of on life support” and prone to recovering briefly before falling back again.
He contrasted this with the BJP’s election strategy, saying the party moves quickly from one state to another and treats every contest as vital, explaining that once “Bihar is over” the BJP immediately turns to the next round of polls, while the Opposition usually reaches those states only “two months before the elections”.
“We will be lucky if we sew up our election alliances before the last date of filing of nominations, and sometimes not even then,” he said.
Abdullah also said he did not believe electronic voting machines were rigged but argued that “elections can be manipulated” by adjusting voter lists or changing constituency boundaries.
Also read: What Election Commission data says about ‘vote chori’ in the Bihar elections
Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi responded to Abdullah’s remarks, saying that he has “always been very straightforward in his politics” and expresses his views openly, PTI reported.
She added that “even before the Bihar elections, Uddhav Thackeray had said that a meeting was necessary, but after the Lok Sabha elections, no major meeting of the full alliance has taken place”.
She added that all parties, particularly the Congress, need to “rethink, rework, re-energize, regroup, and figure out how to come together again”.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance is an Opposition bloc of several parties formed in July 2023 to put a united fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The alliance won 234 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won the election, but secured a narrower majority than predicted by most pollsters.
After the Lok Sabha election, however, the alliance suffered defeats in Assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar. In Jharkhand, an alliance led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha won the Assembly election in November 2024, while the National Conference won the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election in October 2024.
Also read: What the Opposition got so wrong in Bihar
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