The
fissures in the mahagathbandhan are gradually becoming visible and its ability
to maintain a united front till after the election results will be the decider
Amitabh
Shukla
As
the Lok Sabha election gets tantalisingly close, the season of mahagathbandhan
or a grand alliance has started in right earnest. So has flexing of political
muscles by what can loosely be called as the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party
(anti-BJP) — a conglomeration of diverse regional parties, united by a single agenda
of removing the Modi-Shah duo from national politics in the Lok Sabha election.
Of course, BJP rebel and now architect of the “Save Democracy” movement
Yashwant Sinha adroitly reminded everybody that the Modi versus Rest narrative would only strengthen the former’s
image and the Opposition needed to counter the BJP on ideological counts.
Raised
hands and clenched fists of all leaders present in the Kolkata rally, organised
by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), not only gave a perfect photo opportunity to Opposition
leaders but somewhere down the line increased the frown lines of the defender —
the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Many considered the rally
largely as an exercise to project TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee as a possible prime ministerial candidate of the grand
Opposition alliance for the Lok Sabha poll even though the stated objective was
to bring all anti-BJP parties on the same platform. But that’s just one aspect
of the burgeoning index of Opposition unity.
Of
course, all the 20-plus parties that participated in the Kolkata rally on
January 19 had different agenda on their minds. Most of them were looking for a
better outing in the Assembly polls with their respective alliances, where the
BJP has become a force to reckon with since 2014. But given that the TMC hosted
the first successful Opposition rally and managed to get on board almost all
leaders and parties opposed to the BJP, it can now safely claim to be the
leader of this Third Front. Banerjee also pitched herself as a sort of an
arbitrator for possible disputes, whenever and wherever they arise, among this
Front. Her diplomatic handling of the stage and giving importance to all the
leaders present amply suggested her ease of managing diverse interests, her
acceptability and showed her national ambitions.
But
the fissures in such a loose formation are still too wide and its ability to
pose as a united front before the election is still a matter of speculation.
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu, who was present in the
Kolkata rally, has practically abandoned the Congress with which he had sewed
an alliance for the Assembly polls of Telangana. Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Naidu had
become the poster boys of this mahagathbandhan then, beaming as they were with
hands raised in solidarity.
As
an afterthought, the TDP supremo perhaps realised that he cannot give much
space to the Congress to grow in his home state of Andhra Pradesh. An alliance
with the Congress in the State would limit his chances to have a go at the
chair of Prime Minister. He might have perhaps looked at the prospects of him
somehow becoming a possible compromise candidate in the event of this
Opposition grand alliance getting close to government formation.
Besides,
Mamata Banerjee and Chandrababu Naidu, who are possibly looking at a national
role for themselves, this anti-BJP Opposition front also has Dalit leader and
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati as the prime ministerial candidate.
She has been endorsed strongly not only by her own party but also by her
newly-found political partner and nephew Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party
(SP). The Bua-Bhatija alliance is the one which has set the tone and template
for the general election and almost every political pundit now says that the
road to New Delhi this time would go through the lanes and bylanes of Lucknow
and Uttar Pradesh.
Days
before the Kolkata rally of the Opposition, the SP-BSP alliance in Uttar
Pradesh triggered a wave of anticipation among the anti-BJP front and threw
open a wide range of political possibilities at the cost of the saffron party
in the largest State of the country. The
TMC rally simply took the idea of unity ahead and sort of announced to
the world that the neutral Third Front was alive and kicking and both the BJP and the Congress should
consider it as a possible contender for the throne in Delhi provided it gets
the numbers leaders are hoping for. And if all parties do well individually,
then the Congress can provide outside support if the situation so warrants.
Coming
back to the SP-BSP alliance, even the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar,
which has a vote base similar to the SP’s in Uttar Pradesh, is excited
about its prospects. This perhaps
explains why Tejaswi Yadav, the de facto supremo of the party in the absence of
the incarcerated Lalu Prasad Yadav, dashed to Lucknow to congratulate Mayawati
on her birthday and tweeted pictures in which he touched her feet
reverentially. It’s rare to see bonhomie between the parties representing the
Dalits (BSP) and OBCs led by the Yadav community (SP and RJD), as they have not
only been at political but also social loggerheads for decades.
Tejaswi
knows for sure that keeping the BSP in good humour would only help consolidate
and expand the vote base of the grand alliance in Bihar. Dalit leader and Lok
Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan is firmly in the NDA fold, at
least for the Lok Sabha election, and the RJD would be more than happy to get
any incremental votes of Dalits in the State if Mayawati is on board even if
the BSP does not contest a single seat as part of the grand alliance in Bihar.
In fact, the RJD could go to the extent of offering a seat or two to the BSP
even though the Mayawati-led party does not have any foothold in the
neighbouring state.
In
this season of anti-BJP posturing, photo ops and alliances ahead of the Lok
Sabha poll, the only motive seems to be removal of Narendra Modi as the Prime
Minister by working out sound electoral mathematics and ensuring a higher seat turnout than the BJP did in the 2014 polls.
The SP-BSP alliance is simply banking on the fact that if it gets a combined
vote share, which is higher than the NDA’s in the state, it would be in the
driver’s seat. Of course, chemistry and adjustment are equally important in alliances
and it remains to be seen how firmly it is cemented at the grassroots and booth levels.
Left
out of the alliance in Uttar Pradesh — a move on expected lines — the Congress
is neither happy nor unhappy at this moment, contemplating the different possibilities
along with permutations and combinations ahead. Optimists in the party believe
that at the end of the day, the SP-BSP alliance could be a part of the UPA if
the numbers so demand and they are at a striking distance of forming the next
government. Of course, Mayawati would throw her hat in the ring for a possible
go at the chair of Prime Minister if the situation so warrants and the
mahagathbandhan gets a respectable number of seats. This situation would be
conditional on the Congress not doing well and remaining well below 100 seats,
regional parties dominating the results and the BSP itself performing well and
getting a reasonable number of the 38 seats it would be contesting out of the
80 in Uttar Pradesh.
But
there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Post-verdict electoral
understandings, support and alliances could be quite different from the ones
cemented pre-poll. In a possible scenario where the NDA is a little short of
majority, the BSP could always spring a surprise. It has a history of aligning
with both SP and BJP, and there has been no shift in BSP’s ideology even as it
goes to polls this time around as a formidable force in alliance with the SP in
Uttar Pradesh.
Similarly,
the TDP, too, could go anywhere — from the NDA to the UPA, or to Third Front —
in the post-poll political calculations. In the last six months, we have seen
the party travelling all platforms. So there we are. It all depends on numbers
after the polling and till then, all political parties would be posturing and keeping their options open.
Much water will flow till then. (January 22, 2019)
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