It is amazing that Congress and its big regional allies did not even consider the need to talk to smaller allies before seat sharing. Leaders of communist parties in Jharkhand kept waiting but no one spoke from Congress and JMM. CPI Male chief Dipankar Bhattacharya expressed his pain in the ‘India’ block meeting held in Patna regarding the by-elections. Sometimes four and sometimes five seats were proposed unilaterally by Congress and JMM. CPI(ML) wanted five seats but if talks had been held sitting down, it would have agreed to four seats also. In the end both parties gave up the seats but there was a lot of bad blood about it.
On the other hand, in Maharashtra, when Congress and other parties did not talk to Samajwadi Party, SP also unilaterally declared five candidates. After this the news came that an agreement was reached between Congress, Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar. Congress will contest on 105 seats, Uddhav on 95 and Pawar on 84 seats. In this way 284 seats were divided. Now four seats left. So will SP, which has demanded 12 seats and declared candidates for five, get four seats? This confusion happened because of not talking first. Similarly, no one talked to the Aam Aadmi Party. In Haryana, Congress lost five seats because of AAP. AAP got about two percent votes. Even in Maharashtra, Aam Aadmi Party may lose a few votes. In a head-to-head contest, even a small vote means a lot. Congress and its allies made no effort to talk to Raju Shetty, Manoj Jarange Patil, Bachchu Kadu, Chhatrapati Sambhaji or Prakash Ambedkar and accommodate them.