BSP supremo Mayawati has steered clear of having a truck with the Congress in the ensuing assembly elections next month. This has the portends of delivering a severe blow to opposition unity and countering the dominant narrative of the BJP being at the helm of affairs at the Centre.
Speaking at rallies recently in the run up to the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan among other states where the Lotus party is in power, party president Amit Shah likened infiltrators to termites. The signal is ominous of repatriating them to their country of origin. At the BJP’s national executive last month, he emphasised if the saffron brigade retains power in next year’s general elections, nobody can dislodge it for the next five decades.
This is an emphatic pointer to making its strategy of polarisation succeed against all odds. It may be recalled that in the 2014 general elections, BJP’s Prime Ministerial nominee and the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi harped on the issues of development and tackling corruption eating into the vitals of the country. There is no doubt that the non-Hindutva supporters who backed Modi are now a highly disappointed lot. At the same time the saffron brigade has calculatedly taken recourse to whipping up communal themes with emphasis on Hindutva in keeping with the agenda of the party’s mentor, the RSS.
A case in point is the manner in which Shah has laid emphasis on the National Register of Citizens in Assam being extended to other states. What is significant is that small batches of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are being repatriated to their country. The Congress strategy of contesting assembly elections by knitting alliances in the states has received a severe jolt. Like Mayawati, SP chief and former UP chief minister Akhilesh Singh has also decided to side step the Congress which had shown no interest in approaching them for working out seat adjustments.
The regional satraps are waiting for the outcome in the five states where assembly elections will be held from November 12 to the seventh of December. Counting is scheduled to take place on the eleventh of December. Thereafter, they will make an assessment of the strategy to adopt in the 2019 general elections.
The Grand Old party cannot afford to sit on a high horse but get its act together in the run up to the general elections in 2019. This assumes significance with two regional parties in the country’s largest state of UP which has the maximum number of 80 seats to the Lok Sabha steering clear of alliance talks with the Congress.
Former Union finance minister and senior Congressman P Chidambaram has cautioned that the ability of political parties to give and take will be the principal challenges to the formation of state level anti-BJP alliances for next year’s general elections. Positions taken by political parties are not immutable. It is possible the BSP will realise it will gain more in a coalition rather than fighting it alone, he observed.
Clearly, the message from the BSP is its unwillingness to pay a heavy price for banking on the Congress which has failed to show any marked sign of revival. Then there is lack of confidence in Congress president Rahul Gandhi being able to pull the chestnuts out of the fire as it were. Despite the votes for the BSP being in single digit in Madhya Pradesh, she has been trying to bolster her party’s vote share in the Hindi heartland and the South as well.
Mayawati remains an important player in Uttar Pradesh and her alliance with SP seems to be on track at this juncture. She is eyeing a highly ambitious Dalit consolidation countrywide which can pose serious problems for the BJP. The ruling party has garnered the votes of the backward among the Dalits which has contributed in no small measure in regaining UP after a considerable gap of time. The assembly elections in five states is being seen more as a semi-final for the Congress party in regaining some lost ground in the Hindi belt.
There is palpable anti-incumbency against the BJP which has been in power for three consecutive terms in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. In Rajasthan there is discernible disquiet with the leadership of chief minister Vasundhara Raje. The Congress needs to present itself in a new avatar to enthuse the electorate. It needs to look within by ending rampant factionalism along with throwing up young leaders. The question is can Rahul Gandhi infuse confidence among the people at large.
Madhya Pradesh is keenly watched as it has the maximum number of 29 seats in the Lok Sabha compared to the others having assembly elections. At the same time it is difficult to say that a loss for the BJP in MP will have a bearing in next year’s general elections. At the same time, the failure of the Congress and BSP forging an alliance will be to BJP’s advantage.
The BSP has not won even ten seats in the last three assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. Nevertheless, it has hurt both the BJP and the Congress in a significant number of seats. The Congress-BSP alliance in the state might have been formidable for the former in terms of vote share. These assembly elections can cast their shadow in the general elections barely seven months away.
T R Ramchandran is a senior journalist and commentator.
