Sharad Pawar from the NCP-SP party said that the INDIA bloc was only for national elections. He mentioned this because people were talking about possible problems in the alliance. Pawar said that they didn’t agree to work together for state or local elections and that each party will decide their own plans for those in the next week or so. The main reason they formed the INDIA bloc was to go up against the BJP in national elections.
This statement comes after Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) said that the INDIA bloc and the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliances might be breaking apart. The MVA includes Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, and NCP(SP) and mostly works in Maharashtra state. Pawar’s comments show that the goals of the alliances are different for national and state elections. It also shows that it is not always easy for alliances to work together at the state level.
It seems that different election types need different ways of working together. The INDIA bloc mainly focuses on national elections so they were never really planning on a state-level plan. The parties now have to figure out how they will work together at the state level if they plan to at all. This raises questions about how well these different parties actually work together and what will happen in the future for the political alliances in India.