INDIA Bloc Leaves Delhi With To-Do List, Sets Next Meeting Date In Hyderabad

The opposition INDIA bloc wrapped up its high-stakes “INDIA Janbandhan” meeting at the Constitution Club of India on Monday afternoon with a show of unity, agreeing on five concrete action points and announcing that the grouping would next convene in Hyderabad in August.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, along with Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and other top leaders of the alliance, addressed the media after the meeting concluded. “A total of 25 parties participated in the INDIA bloc meeting and all the leaders aired their views. We have expressed our agreement on five issues,” he said.

The five resolutions represent the most concrete collective statement the bloc has produced in months, spanning electoral integrity, economic distress, examination irregularities, parliamentary strategy and internal coordination.

The first was to write to the Chief Justice of India over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and what the alliance described as systematic vote-looting and the stealing of elections. “The letter will be delivered to the CJI very soon,” Kharge said. He had set the tone at the start of the meeting itself, charging that the voting rights of millions of people were being “stripped away” by the SIR, a process the opposition has long argued is being used to disenfranchise voters in non-BJP states. 

The second resolution that drew unanimous agreement across party lines was the demand for immediate resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Kharge said Pradhan had “presided over the betrayal of lakhs of youth” who appeared in the NEET and CBSE examinations, pointing to what he described as the gross mismanagement of the examination system that had shattered the aspirations of an entire generation of students. The NEET-UG 2026 examination was cancelled and later rescheduled after widespread allegations of a paper leak, sparking protests led by the group Cockroach Janata Party. 

Third, the bloc demanded that the Union government immediately convene an all-party meeting to address what Kharge called the precarious state of the national economy,  encompassing unemployment, price rise, the agrarian crisis and ongoing atrocities against oppressed sections of society. Kharge had earlier warned that the economic environment was “extremely negative,” that private monopolies were growing unchecked across sectors, and that the future of MSMEs was in serious jeopardy. 

The fourth point addressed the bloc’s internal machinery, a coordinated floor strategy for the upcoming Monsoon Session, with leaders agreeing to meet regularly in the chamber of the Leader of the Opposition for ongoing coordination. 

As per the fifth resolution, the leaders decided to meet every two months going forward. The next meeting will be held in Hyderabad in August, with the exact date to be confirmed. The rotating venue is being read as a deliberate political signal, taking the INDIA bloc out of the drawing rooms of Delhi and planting it in regional strongholds, lending it a national character beyond its Congress-centric optics.

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren participated virtually, while NCP (SP)’s Supriya Sule, CPI(M)’s John Brittas, CPI’s D Raja, J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti and VCK president Tholkappiyan Thirumavalavan among those present in the hall.

The meeting, the first formal assembly of the INDIA bloc since the June 2024 Lok Sabha elections, comes at a moment of significant internal strain, with the DMK having walked out over Congress’s decision to back the TVK government in Tamil Nadu, and the Trinamool Congress battling a deepening rebellion that claimed its first parliamentary scalp on the very morning of the gathering, when senior Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray resigned from both the Upper House and the party.