Last updated:
The biggest challenge for the India faction is that it still has no definitive answer to a fundamental question: Is it merely an anti-BJP platform, or a genuine long-term political alliance?
The AI ​​generated images of Mamata Banerjee, Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and MK Stalin, all of whom are part of the Indian faction.
If the Indian faction seems united in Parliament, it is because Delhi is the only place where its contradictions can still be temporarily managed. Outside of this, the alliance often looks less like a cohesive alliance and more like a truce set to restart fighting between rivals awaiting the next state elections.
Nationalist Congress Party (SP) chief Sharad Pawar’s praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “upholding India’s honor abroad” has once again exposed the strange reality at the heart of the opposition alliance: While Indian parties unite against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the central government at the national level, many of them remain fierce competitors at the regional level, with conflicting ambitions, inconsistent politics and deep mistrust beneath the surface.
Strong inside Parliament, fragile outside
As a legislative body, India has often acted cohesively. Opposition parties have jointly cornered the government on issues ranging from Manipur violence and unemployment to electoral bonds, federalism and institutional autonomy. The coordinated walkouts, floor tactics and joint protests have given visibility to the alliance as a united anti-BJP front.
But when electoral politics comes into play, that unity breaks down again and again.
The clearest examples are emerging in states where India’s allies are effectively waging parallel political battles against each other while trying to preserve their regional ecosystems.
west bengal
In West Bengal, the Indian group is barely present on the ground. Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress sees the Congress and the Left not as partners in the state, but as its main rivals.
TMC and Congress did not form an alliance for the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections primarily due to deep structural disagreements over seat-sharing, differing national versus state-level strategies and friction caused by contemporary political developments. Despite both being members of the India Bloc, local ambitions and mutual distrust forced them to run completely independent campaigns.
The result was horrific. TMC lost the elections and BJP came to power in the state for the first time.
During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, TMC largely contested the elections alone despite formally being within the Indian framework. TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has openly accused the Congress of failing to cooperate with regional allies, which led to fragmentation of opposition votes and helped the BJP gain ground. As a result, the TMC leadership argued that they could not afford to strengthen the national alliance at the expense of their own apparent state-level dominance.
Uttar Pradesh
On Tuesday, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav indicated that his party’s alliance with the Congress will continue in the 2027 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, but remained silent on who would be the face of the opposition.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party have collaborated electorally against the BJP, but tensions over seat sharing and leadership have continued to surface. Yadav has carefully ensured that the SP remains the major opposition pole in UP, limiting the scope for a Congress revival. Meanwhile, the Congress considers Uttar Pradesh too politically important to remain a junior ally permanently.
The contradiction is structural: Congress wants long-term revival in the Hindi heartland states, while regional allies want Congress confined to limited areas.
Maharashtra
Maharashtra perhaps best reflects the chaos within India.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi experiment brought together Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP), but beneath the alliance there are persistent differences over leadership, cadre conflict and political status. Sharad Pawar’s comments on PM Modi are the latest example of differing messages within the faction. But this is not the first time that Pawar has supported PM Modi.
After the Modi government abrogated Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, Pawar did not aggressively oppose the move, as many opposition parties did. Instead, he cautioned against excessive politicization and said that many people in the country supported the decision. During the pandemic, Pawar repeatedly called for political consensus and publicly supported coordination with the Centre. At several points, he lauded PM Modi’s outreach efforts and emphasized that national crises require cooperation rather than confrontation.
One of the biggest moments came when Pawar, moving away from the opposition’s jibes, said that personal milestones should be placed above political rivalries. Pawar revealed that he had wished PM Modi on his 75th birthday and stressed that such occasions should not be marred with bitterness. He said in a humorous tone that he himself has never stopped working at the age of 75, so he has no right to ask PM Modi to stop working.
At several moments, Congress leaders privately expressed discomfort over what they saw as Pawar’s “soft signals” towards the BJP. Meanwhile, the Sena (UBT) has continued to balance aggressive Hindutva rhetoric with opposition politics, creating ideological contradictions within the alliance itself.
Seat-sharing talks ahead of the elections have repeatedly dragged on as each party seeks to maximize its regional influence while preventing the Congress from becoming too strong.
Tamil Nadu
The biggest political alliance took place after the 2026 assembly elections, where the Congress abandoned its long-term ally, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), to extend full support to actor-politician Vijay’s newly formed party, the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK), which emerged as the largest party with 108 seats.
DMK has openly accused Congress of betraying their 20-year-old alliance. The decision by Congress to support TVK was taken quickly to secure power-sharing in the new government. The bitterness has increased to the national level. The DMK formally wrote to the Lok Sabha Speaker requesting alternative seating arrangements so that their MPs no longer sit with Congress members. Other national figures within the India block, such as Akhilesh Yadav, have publicly taken a dig at the Congress for opportunism, indicating that the Tamil Nadu result is weighing on the national alliance.
While veteran leaders like P. Chidambaram have publicly expressed “hope” that the DMK will remain in the national alliance and the TVK will eventually join it, local political realities have completely neutralized the original, unified structure of the Bharat Bloc in Tamil Nadu.
Main contradiction: Congress versus regional aspirations
At the core of India’s instability lies a structural contradiction that may never disappear completely.
The Congress wants to regain its position as an all-India pole capable of leading the opposition at the national level. To do this, it must grow in states where regional parties dominate. But those regional parties joined the alliance because they feared losing ground to both the BJP and potentially the Congress.
As a result, India often operates as a cooperative faction in Parliament, a strategic arrangement during specific elections, but a competitive battlefield at the state level.
This contradiction has come to the fore again and again in seat-sharing delays, public disagreements, mixed messages on national issues and parallel political ambitions.
2026 a wake-up call?
The BJP’s dramatic success in West Bengal in the 2026 assembly elections briefly jolted the Indian faction back into existence. After months of infighting, seat-sharing bitterness and regional wars, when the scale of the BJP’s expansion became clear, opposition leaders suddenly rediscovered the language of “unity”.
Immediately after the results, coalition leaders attempted to reunify. Akhilesh Yadav publicly supported Mamata Banerjee, while opposition leaders stressed the need for greater coordination against the BJP’s growing national dominance. The renewed engagement among India’s constituents after the shock in Bengal has exposed how opposition politics has fragmented state by state.
But the regrouping itself exposed the alliance’s central contradiction. The Indian camp is often most united after a big BJP victory, not before.
The Bengal results therefore became a symbol of India’s failure to act unitedly during the elections, and a trigger for temporary reunification efforts following the results.
This contradiction lies at the root of the alliance’s current crisis. India repeatedly seeks unity in response to the BJP’s momentum, but struggles to maintain it when regional ambitions, leadership questions and state-level rivalries come to the fore.
Can India survive as a national alternative?
The biggest challenge for the India faction is that it still has no definitive answer to a fundamental question: Is it merely an anti-BJP platform, or a genuine long-term political alliance?
So far, it has functioned effectively when its purpose is parliamentary coordination or strategic electoral arithmetic. But every major state election exposes the deep flaws of the alliance – ideology, leadership ambitions, the fight for regional dominance and the question of Congress revival.
This is why the Indian faction today exists in two parallel realities: united as a voting bloc inside Parliament, but disintegrating on the ground as the real electoral stakes unfold.
read more
