Seat sharing, poll strategy on the table at I.N.D.I.A meet today
The coordination and election strategy committee of I.N.D.I.A bloc will meet here for the first time on Wednesday to discuss joint election campaigns, rallies and the contentious seat-sharing process.
The meeting will be held at the NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s residence here at 4 pm which will be attended by leaders including K C Venugopal, T R Baalu, Hemant Soren, Sanjay Raut, Tejashwi Yadav, Raghav Chadha, Javed Ali Khan, Rajiv Ranjan ‘Lalan’ Singh, Omar Abdullah, D Raja and Mehbooba Mufti.
However, Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee will not be attending the meeting, as he has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate. Trinamool sources said it would not be sending a replacement for the meeting as a “political point”.
The ED gave the notice on the same day when the Coordination Committee was meeting, which was announced a week ago, sources said.
"They had plotted and planned. We informed Pawar and Venugopal that Abhishek will be appearing before the agency and they should go ahead with the meeting. We also informed them no other leader will represent us. We explained the rationale and they understood," a senior Trinamool leader said.
The CPI(M) has also yet not given its name for the 14-member panel and would not be represented in the meeting. A senior CPI(M) leader said that the party would decide on its nominee for the committee during its Polit Bureau meeting on September 16 and 17.
Among other things, the committee will also discuss a note prepared by the Campaign Committee after a meeting on September 6 on holding rallies in five cities – Patna, Nagpur, Chennai, Guwahati and Delhi – with a single theme. It has also proposed rallies in Lucknow, Bhopal and Jaipur.
The panel will also discuss the content for the vision document, which is likely to be released on October 2. The Working Group for Research has been asked to prepare data points on possible campaign points.
The Campaign Committee was to meet on Tuesday but it was postponed in the wake of the Coordination Committee meeting. It wanted the Coordination Committee to have a look at its proposal.
Sources said by September 22, there will be a joint meeting of the Campaign Committee and Working Groups on Media, Social Media and Research.