While the ruling BJP is all set for the parliamentary elections to be announced any time now, the Opposition I.N.D.I.A alliance has been floating like flotsam and jetsam. What has given buoyancy to the BJP is the consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, at the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the contrary, the Opposition alliance has been functioning like a rudderless entity. Nobody has a clear idea of who exactly its leader is. There is increasing evidence that it may not even be able to contest as a single bloc in any of the states. Generally speaking, the parties would be contesting in their individual capacities and not as a monolithic alliance.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has given the bugle call that her Trinamool Congress would contest all the seats in West Bengal. It knows that the Congress does not matter in the state, as it did not win even a single seat in the Assembly elections. In any case, she cannot have a tie-up with the CPM. In fact, it was by fighting the Left Front that she established her credentials among the people of the state. She thinks that she can move on her own steam. Similar thoughts have been guiding Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who has announced his decision to go it alone in the state. In doing so, he has thwarted the attempts to forge an electoral arrangement with the Congress in Delhi. What the AAP and the TMC forget is that they are merely playing into the hands of the BJP.
In the olden days, the Congress at the centre used to win as the Opposition votes would get divided. Today, the beneficiary of this phenomenon in the first-past-the-post voting is the BJP. Reports suggest that the Congress has shown its willingness to compromise on the seats it wants to contest. It is difficult for the party to realise that for some of the constituents in I.N.D.I.A, it is the Congress which they have been fighting all along. Like, for instance, the Marxists who see the Congress, not the BJP, as their main rival in Kerala. In large states like UP and Bihar, the Congress is not even in a position to bargain with, say, the Samajwadi Party or the JD(U) because it does not count there. Sadly but surely, it is Advantage BJP.
