Rahul Gandhi may have the largest chunk of Opposition MPs, but is not perceived as the natural leader of a coalition comprising towering personalities such as Mamata Bannerjee and Sharad Pawar. Once a partnership has been formed, the terms of engagement, such as seat-sharing, rarely change.
Thus, both partners seek to strike the most advantageous deal at the very outset and this can delay negotiations. The political bazaar is open for business, as regional parties prepare to negotiate terms with national players in the run-up to Lok Sabha 2019. In the upcoming battle of alliances, the party which forms the strongest pre-electoral coalition will have an advantage.
The perception that the BJP’s hegemony will not endure, barring force majeure, has given the NDA allies some bargaining power. Already, they are making threatening noises. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) grumbles openly about the lack of adequate funds for Andhra; the Shiv Sena claims the BJP is attempting to ‘upstage’ it and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) calls for better treatment of allies.
The Congress is even worse off, with party president Rahul Gandhi yet to take command of the UPA. He may have the largest chunk of Opposition MPs, but is not perceived as the natural leader of a coalition comprising towering personalities such as Mamata Bannerjee and Sharad Pawar.
Why are alliances necessary? The answer lies in the limited regional presence of the national parties. The BJP has virtually no footprint in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra, Telengana and West Bengal and is just beginning to establish itself in Odisha. Likewise, the Congress is a non-starter along the entire East coast, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It has withered even in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, the state which brought it to power in 2004 and 2009.
In a first-past-the-post system, aggregation of votes at the level of individual Lok Sabha seats is critical. The more votes pooled, the better the chances of victory. Even in bipolar contests like Gujarat — BJP vs Congress — a state-level player like Hardik Patel can make all the difference by bridging the ‘vote deficit’ of its national partner.
In states, where regional players are dominant, national parties naturally cannot go it alone. Tamil Nadu is the most obvious example, where BJP and Congress must assess which of the half-a-dozen parties will prove to be viable partners. To maximize winning potential, even a small party which can influence the outcome on just a few seats is important.
Ideology may or may not play a role in stitching up alliances. In Bihar, the Janata Dal (United) had no hesitation in tying up with the BJP, but in Maharashtra, the ideological incompatibility between the Shiv Sena and NCP-Congress is perhaps too extreme to allow a viable partnership. Social coalitions are even trickier. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP and Apna Dal have formed a successful partnership based on non-Yadav OBCs. A less successful coalition was that between the BJP and BSP which brought upper castes and Dalits on board in the 1990s. Mayawati would later do the same on her own in 2007.
The incentives for pre-electoral coalitions are obvious. For national players, the motive is to maximize seats so as to cross the half-way mark. For state players, it is the hope of finding representation at the centre.
Once a partnership has been formed, the terms of engagement, such as seat-sharing, rarely change. Thus, both partners seek to strike the most advantageous deal at the very outset and this can delay negotiations. For instance, the alliance between the Congress and Samajwadi Party in the UP assembly elections, was finalised at the 11th hour, thanks to quibbling over seat-share. In 2015, the NCP declared that the UPA was ‘gone’ and called for a new formation, the implication being that it wanted an alliance on fresh terms.
The Congress, which narrowly won two general elections on the back of a strong pre-electoral coalition, is currently in a peculiar position because of the leadership issue. It was NCP leader Sharad Pawar rather than Congress president Rahul Gandhi who initiated moves for Opposition unity, by calling for a multi-party ‘Samvidhan March’. This compelled the Congress to call a meeting of the UPA, chaired by erstwhile party president Sonia Gandhi.
Stalwarts like Pawar, who has had a troubled history with the Congress, and Banerjee are not sanguine about playing second fiddle to Rahul at the centre. His leadership skills were called into question when JD(U) leader and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar joined the NDA last year. As a result, the Opposition lost a potential ‘face’ for its 2019 campaign.
Among other non-NDA, non-UPA parties, BJD leader Naveen Patnaik has shown no inclination to ally with any party. Recently, the CPI (M) Central Committee gave a thumbs down to a proposal for allying with the Congress. The Samajwadi Party also said it had no plans for allying with any party for the Lok Sabha polls. The Bahujan Samaj Party, always a tough customer, last allied with the Congress in 1995 and parted on bitter terms.
As for the Janata Dal (S) and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, the BJP hopes to bring them on board. The former could prove a valuable ally in Karnataka, which goes to polls in April. Likely to lose a large number of seats in the cow belt and the west, the BJP must look to the south. But the Congress has to look for friends everywhere and if Sonia’s health does not allow her to take point, the job will have to be outsourced.
In the next year or so before the Lok Sabha polls, it is clear that the political management skills of both Congress and BJP and their allies, will be tested to the utmost.
The author is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author.
