The fact that Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal were the ones who proposed Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to be the convenor of the INDIA Bloc and, by extension, the Opposition’s Prime Ministerial face against that of Narendra Modi is, perhaps, the biggest takeaway from the fourth edition of the anti-BJP pan-India platform meeting held in Delhi on Tuesday.

That’s because this was the first time that not one, but two non-BJP regional satraps _ of the Trinamul Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party _ reposed trust in a Congress leader to lead a make-or-break political battle against a common adversary that looks more formidable now, following its electoral triumph in three states, than ever before. That, despite both parties having a recent track record of a bitter relationship with the Congress in their respective regional spaces.

There’s only one way to interpret the Banerjee-Kejriwal move made during the closed-door meeting at the Ashoka Hotel: that it’s a done deal with the Congress as far as the Trinamul and AAP are concerned and that the respective parties would not be fighting the Congress within their strongholds, with or without formally stitching an alliance.

While the grassroots reality of vote mathematics may have compelled the AAP to cozy up to the Congress (seemingly, neither of the two parties separately have a future against the BJP in Delhi at this point), Banerjee wooing the Congress looks to be based on a dual roleplay of taking the lead in setting the tone of alliance dharma of political sacrifice as well as obliterating chances of vote division in certain pockets of Bengal where the Congress still holds some sway.

While refusing to comment on the Congress’s strategy to ignore seat requests from alliance partners in the recently concluded state polls (“The past is past, let’s look to the future”, Banerjee had said on Monday) and by expressing her readiness to discuss seats as long as the demands are pragmatic (“Don’t forget that the Congress has only two seats in Bengal,” she had said), Banerjee had already left enough hints on where she stood in terms of partnering with the Congress in Bengal long before she walked into Tuesday’s meeting.

With Bengal Pradesh Congress leaders receiving an appearance summons from the party high command close on the heels of the Delhi meeting also makes it clear that the Congress top leadership is taking the December 31 deadline, set by Banerjee and other leaders to complete seat-sharing talks, seriously.

The Banerjee-Kejriwal proposal, although reportedly brushed aside for now by most of the other parties including the Congress and by Kharge in particular, also seems to have unburdened the Congress, the "big brother" of the Opposition bloc, of the responsibility of extending the olive branch as a gesture of ‘magnanimity’ in so far as giving up its ambition of leading the Bloc is concerned.

The two regional leaders have sailed against the tide and paved the road for the other partners to eventually fall in line in the eventuality of the INDIA platform managing to catch popular support in the run-up to the polls early next year.

In reciprocating that gesture, the Congress does have one riddle to solve as far as Bengal is concerned: Its existing alliance with the Left. With CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury vehement in his ignorance that Kharge’s name was even proposed in the meeting, it seems that the party, which has already announced its resolve to fight the Trinamul in Bengal irrespective of the national partnership, would weigh heavily on the Bengal Pradesh Congress leaders to thwart Banerjee’s move.