INDIA's Mumbai meeting to discuss Delhi HQ proposal
Opposition INDIA allies in Mumbai this week is slated to discuss proposals to set up a central office for the group in Delhi.
The idea behind the proposal, it is learnt, is to show that the INDIA bloc is a collective entity with its own distinctive functional arrangement and space — unlike the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which functions or functioned mostly as extensions or paraphernalia of BJP and Congress, respectively.
«Some INDIA allies have proposed that we should have a functioning collective office, a headquarters, in Delhi for the coordination and secretariate works and meetings. We will discuss this proposal at the coming meeting of the alliance leaders (in Mumbai on August 31 and September 1) and will take a collective view,» said an INDIA leader involved in the discussions.
The proposers feel the bloc, which also consists of some turf-rivals, having its own working office in Delhi can help both in terms of giving it a national structural identity and a political address, independent of each partner and of any big brother's shadow.
Also, a logo of the group, which is expected to be unveiled during the Mumbai meeting, could be permanently displayed there.
If meet agrees on the proposal, then the task will be to search a 'neutral' office place in the Lutyens' Delhi area where the Opposition parties' office spaces, incidentally, have been shrinking in proportion to their diminished strength in Parliament post-2014. The last national alliances with designated headquarters were the short-lived National Front, which functioned out of a Windsor Place office, when the VP Singh government ran on the BJP-Left joint crutches, and the United Front of
