It is becoming increasingly clear that Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi’s plan to forge a united front of opposition parties is running into rough weather. Sonia has had a one-point agenda—to foist her son Rahul as the Opposition challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
She is blinded about his serious limitations and his general unacceptability to Opposition parties as the captain of the ship. But her pursuit of the goal is relentless and she has no qualms about opening her purse strings to achieve that. The third force that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is contemplating is projected to be a front without the BJP and the Congress. It is touted as a conglomerate of regional forces with each state being dominated by the principal regional force of the respective areas.
With the DMK having voiced support for Mamata’s proposal and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao having opted to join, besides overtures made to Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and Chandrababu Naidu of Telugu Desam, the hopes of a third force have brightened. As it stands, there is no way Mamata would accept Rahul as prime minister at the head of a coalition but in Indian politics there are no impossibilities. If the Congress were to emerge with a substantial tally, who can rule out what appears impossible today.
As it seems, things are heading to a situation where there would be three-cornered contests with the BJP+, the Congress and its allies and the regional parties being the three fronts. A divided opposition would be a huge blessing for the BJP and could revive its sagging fortunes. Only if the Opposition forges a genuinely united front and agrees on a credible leader would the conglomerate acquire the credibility to challenge the BJP. That seems a distant dream as of now. The outcome of recent UP bypolls was a clear indicator that it became possible to beat the BJP in the constituencies of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya because the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party drowned their deep differences and fought together.
That indeed forced the BJP to re-think its strategy for the country’s most populous state which sends as many as 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. If Mamata’s plans to forge a third force fructify, neither the Congress-led front nor the Mamata-led regional front would have a realistic chance to beat the BJP. True, if they go for a post-poll arrangement to keep the BJP at bay they could have an outside chance, but considering that at the contest stage the advantage of a combined opposition onslaught on the BJP would be lost it is an uphill and remote possibility.
The Congress knows only too well that under Mamata’s plan, it would be left high and dry and any hopes that it may nurture of a leadership role for Rahul would virtually be dashed to the ground. There is no way the party would accept such a proposition and without Congress participation any Opposition challenge to the BJP would be feeble indeed.
The problem with the Opposition is that it has too many aspirants for prime ministership. So long as the question of leadership is left open, there are many takers for Opposition conclaves. But when itcomes to the crunch and a leader needs to be decided, individual egos figure in a big way. The Congress is not prepared to look at anyone other than Rahul so long as the Sonia-Rahul duo is dominant in the party. Despite Rahul having failed to attract votes for the Congress in election afterelection, there is an unrealistic expectation among partymen that the duo would pull the party out of the morass it is in.
Congressmen would keep sulking in private but when they are before the duo or in the company of the army of sycophants they are a picture of subservience. There seems little future for the party in such a scenario. Waiting in the wings to capitalize on years of cultivating all hues of politicians is the redoubtable Sharad Pawar whose party the NCP has a miniscule presence in the Lok Sabha. Pawar reckons that if there is a hung Parliament and the Opposition is groping for a leader who is widely acceptable, he could well be the choice. How long such a coalition of disparate forces welded together artificially would last is quite another matter.
Mamata Banerjee too harbours ambitions of sitting on the prime ministerial gaddi but it is inconceivable that she would be acceptable to the Congress except by a long shot just to keep Narendra Modi away. Another dark horse is Chandrababu Naidu of TDP who could be seen to have a remote chance. Had Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar continued in the Opposition the mantle of Modi’s challenger could have fallen on him, but by gravitating towards Modi he has lost whatever chance he had of leading the Opposition pack.All said and done, Modi has the best chance of returning for a second term. But it is a sign of BJP’s misplaced complacency that it is losing allies and failing to forge new friendships.
While Chandrababu Naidu has left the NDA in a huff, the Shiv Sena has long been sulking and has declared categorically that it would not tie up with BJP for the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The Akali Dal was mauled by the Congress in the Punjab Assembly elections but is hanging on to the BJP coat-tails at the Centre though it is none-too-happy. There is a dire need for BJP to hold on to its few existing allies and to forge new links but it seems oblivious to that need.
Kamlendra Kanwar is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books.
