00:00The Indian general election is almost upon us, but the opposition camp is still struggling
00:09with many hurdles that it has to cross. The first is the issue of seat-sharing. Even though
00:14India Alliance leaders had been, many of them at least, had been pushing to finalise a seat-sharing
00:20arrangement by the end of the year, initially it was end of October, then it was end of
00:23December, very little actual practical headway has been made on this, with the exception
00:28of Maharashtra, where reports suggest that the Mahabikas Agadi of the Congress, NCP and
00:33the Shiv Sena have actually finalised broadly what they're going to do. Everywhere else,
00:39the talks are still taking place. Meanwhile, there are other hurdles as well. For example,
00:45the Congress's decision to announce Rahul Gandhi's second part of his Bharat Jodo Yatra,
00:50it's not gone down well with many other alliance partners. Some of them have come on record
00:55to say that they had hoped that the next Yatra would have been something that they
00:58could have jointly done, rather than the Congress going it solo and doing it alone. Some reports
01:04also suggest that there may not even be a common manifesto, the parties really don't
01:08have any common narrative or a common minimum programme or a common agenda that they are
01:14projecting to voters. Time is running out, and if the opposition has any hope at all
01:19to do well in this election, then they have to get their act together right now.
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