Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday blamed the Congress for the lack of progress in the INDIA bloc’s preparations for the 2024 Lok Sabha election, reported The Hindu.

“We spoke with all the parties, urged them to unite and protect the country from those who are trying to alter its history,” said the Janata Dal (United) chief at a rally in Patna. “For this, meetings were held in Patna, and elsewhere. But, of late, there has not been progress on that front.”

Kumar said that this is because the Congress is more interested in the Assembly elections in five states.

Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram are scheduled for November. While Mizoram will go to polls on November 7, Madhya Pradesh will vote on November 17 and Rajasthan on November 25. The elections in Chhattisgarh will be held in two phases on November 7 and November 17, whereas Telangana will go to polls on November 30.

“In the INDIA coalition, we all had agreed to assign the leading role to the Congress but it appears they will call the next meeting only after the polls in five states,” said the chief minister.

The INDIA bloc last met on August 31 and September 1. Following that, the alliance held its first coordination committee meeting on September 13. According to media reports, the talks of seat sharing for the Lok Sabha elections will be held only after the conclusion of the five state Assembly elections.

No Congress-CPI(M) pre-poll alliance in Telangana

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has ended its pre-poll alliance talks with the Congress in Telangana as the two parties could not finalise seat-sharing arrangements for the upcoming Assembly elections before their deadline, reported The New Indian Express on Friday.

CPI(M) state secretary Tammineni Veerabhadram released a list of 17 constituencies in which it will contest independently.

This comes days after Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that his party was “cheated” by the Congress.

‘Congress leaders are making a fool of us,” Yadav had said on October 19. “It has cheated us....had we known that the INDIA alliance is not for Assembly polls, we would not have sent SP leaders to meet former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath. We were assured six seats in Madhya Pradesh but nothing was given to us.”