As it looks to recover from the body blow delivered by Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Tuesday is going to be an important day for the INDIA alliance going forward.

As Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary is observed across India during the day, up north the INDIA alliance will face the BJP in its first electoral test, albeit in the small civic poll in Chandigarh.

In the east, the Congress will attempt to send out a strong signal with a rally in Bihar’s Purnea that Nitish was scheduled to attend earlier along with Lalu Prasad. But now the rally, which will be attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Left leaders, may see just the RJD founder and his son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav in attendance. Their participation, too, is not guaranteed but more on that a bit later.

Out west, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance of the Congress, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) will meet in Mumbai in the hope of finalising a seat-sharing pact for the parliamentary elections. The alliance has also invited Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA).

In Chandigarh, the INDIA alliance takes on the BJP in the mayoral elections. And though a victory does not matter in the larger scheme of things, politics is a lot about optics. For the battered and divided Opposition bloc, a much-needed win will bring a moment of comfort, relief, and maybe even some momentum to the seat-sharing talks, while a loss will just pile on the misery.

The AAP and the Congress — which have run into a wall as far as seat-sharing is concerned in Punjab and have not yet wrapped up a pact for Delhi, Gujarat, or Goa — are in the fray together. The AAP will fight for the mayor’s seat, while the Congress will contest the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor. The BJP holds all three at present. At present, the BJP has 14 councillors in the 35-member Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, the AAP has 13 councillors, the Congress seven, and the Shiromani Akali Dal one.

A couple of weeks ago, the AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha claimed after the election “the scorecard will be INDIA 1, BJP 0.” Since then, a lot has changed. But Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on Monday echoed his party colleague, saying Tuesday might bring a “message of the first victory for the INDIA bloc”.

The JD(U), before it ditched the Opposition alliance on Sunday, cited the Congress’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra as an example of the failure of the grand old party’s imagination and ability to strike up a coherent strategy to take on the BJP. The party said that instead of being held under the Congress banner, the yatra should have been an INDIA event. But though the JD(U) will no longer be there, CPI(ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya will participate in the rally along with several other RJD and Left leaders. Lalu Prasad, who was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged land-for-jobs scam for almost 10 hours in Patna on Monday, and Tejashwi, who has also been summoned, may not be there though.

As reported by Atri Mitra, who is in Purnea to cover the rally, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday remained silent on Nitish’s volte-face, instead focusing his speeches on the demand for a nationwide caste census. Whether he continues to ignore the Bihar CM or sticks to the message will be among the things to watch out for.

Meanwhile, clarity may finally emerge on seat-sharing in the Opposition camp in Maharashtra. There has been quite a lot of back and forth between the MVA’s three constituents, with the Shiv Sena (UBT) sticking to its demand of contesting 23 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state and the Congress countering with a demand for 25-26 tickets.

The VBA has also been invited. Though the Prakash Ambedkar-led party currently has no MLAs or MPs, it has a sizable vote share among Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in parts of Vidarbha, Marathwada, and west Maharashtra. In the 2019 Lok Sabha and subsequent Assembly polls, VBA candidates dented the chances of a significant number of Congress-NCP nominees.

Ambedkar, who has been critical of the anti-BJP alliance continues to remain sceptical about it. The VBA leader told The Indian Express on Monday, “There is no unanimity among constituents representing MVA. The Congress’s high-handedness is adversely affecting the Opposition front … The VBA believes it is ready to support secular parties who are ready to fight the BJP-RSS. Where is the consistency in INDIA and MVA? The Congress is not willing to accommodate regional parties.”

The Opposition has to get its act together in Maharashtra given that the BJP, despite gaining the upper hand in the state, has a “hunger for more”, as Liz Mathew writes in her latest Road to 2024 column. The ruling party has its eye on the western state apart from the key battlegrounds of West Bengal, Karnataka, and Bihar.