SP Snubs Kharge Lunch, Exposing Coordination Strains in INDIA Bloc

Overview

• The Samajwadi Party did not attend a Congress-hosted strategy lunch for INDIA bloc MPs on Wednesday, a day after Opposition leaders staged a protest outside the Election Commission.
• SP officials and an anonymous senior MP said the party stayed away because the Congress communicated the meeting late and only sent a formal letter that reached SP offices after many MPs had left Delhi.
• Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the lunch was called late on Tuesday night and invited all INDIA parties, and he downplayed the absence while stressing continued unity on allegations of 'vote theft', the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and proposed delimitation.
• The protest on Tuesday led to several detentions and an FIR, and SP leader Akhilesh Yadav was briefly detained and later returned to Lucknow, a sequence that helps explain his non-attendance and the SP lawmakers’ decision to march largely as a separate group.
• The episode underscores persistent coordination problems between a national party-led Congress and regional players like the SP, could complicate a unified push against delimitation proposals if Parliament reconvenes, and signals SP’s effort to protect its electoral standing in Uttar Pradesh.