Soroor Ahmed opines that INDIA, which came into being on July 18, 2023 and decided to move no confidence motion within a week of its birth, is somewhat different type of opposition conglomeration, and dwells upon why the saffron camp is feeling jittery.
INDIA, which came into being on July 18, 2023 and decided to move no confidence motion within a week ofits birth, is a somewhat different type of opposition conglomeration. It is not the name of any politicalparty such as Janata Party, which came up on January 23, 1977 and won the parliamentary election againstthe incumbent Prime Minister Indira Gandhi two months later. Nor is it like Janata Dal, which was formedon October 11, 1988 under the leadership of V P Singh and 13 months later with the help of otherparties defeated the ruling Congress then led by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Neither can it be equated with the post- poll United Progressive Alliance floated after the rout ofAtal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance on May 13, 2004.
Indian National Developmental Inclusive Allianceis a group of 26 reasonably strong political parties,the largest being the 138-years old Indian National Congress. It came into existence in Bengaluru onJuly 18 to take on the 38-party National Democratic Alliance. Barring the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the rest 37 parties are very small and insignificant outfits. The names of some of them were neverheard in political circle on the national level.
Thus, unlike in 2004, it is the first concerted effort to oust the BJP-led NDA from the power. In 2004the Congress went to poll in alliance with just a handful of parties, such as DMK in Tamil Nadu,Rashtriya Janata Dal and Lok Janshakti Party in Bihar and a couple of smaller parties. Yet it won 218seats, 140-odd by the Congress itself. It was after the election result that 60 Left Front MPs, 39 ofSamajwadi Party and 19 of the Bahujan Samaj Party threw their weight behind the newly formed UPA.
In contrast INDIA was formed 10 months before the next Lok Sabha poll of 2024. The idea is to work outstrategy and plan of action to fight the well-entrenched BJP, which did not lack resources.
BJP PANICKY?
It is for the first time in the last nine years that the BJP appears to be nervous as most of the 26constituents of INDIA are either ruling different states or are strong opposition outfits. Apart fromthis, Congress is showing signs of revival. This had forced the BJP to suddenly revive the NationalDemocratic Alliance, though till a few days back its top leadership was talking about the growingirrelevance of the regional parties.
Besides, the BJP bigwigs, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have launched a massive broadside onthe very name of INDIA. This is something unprecedented as never in the past the name of oppositionparty or alliance has been targeted in such a massive scale for no valid reason.What they are not realising is that they are in the process exposing their weakness.
How Vulnerable is BJP?
The formation of INDIA has sparked off a debate whether this conglomeration of 26 parties would trouncethe National Democratic Alliance in the 2024 parliamentary election? This is largely because in 1977and 2004, and to some extent in 1989, the coming together of major opposition parties had ensured thedefeat of the ruling party or combination.
However, there are several political pundits who are of the view that it would not be fully appropriateto compare the present political scenario with that of the past three instances. They argue that PrimeMinister Narendra Modi is still the biggest vote-catcher and that the Opposition rank is not socohesive.
Predicting any election outcome is not an easy job, yet old timers can recall that Indira Gandhi andthe combine of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani were equally, if not more, strong than Modinow. No doubt there was under-current of dis-affection against Indira Gandhi in 1977, but in 2004 nopolitical observers ever predicted that the rag-tag army of Congress, with just two main alliancepartners DMK in Tamil Nadu and Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, would upstage the strong Vajpayee-ledarmy of two dozen parties.
The NDA then had all the regional satraps on its side. They were MamataBanerjee in West Bengal, Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Prakash Singh Badal in Punjab, Bal Thackeray inMaharashtra, Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu, Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, Farooq and Omar Abdullah in Jammu andKashmir, etc. Sharad Pawar had on May 25, 1999 broke away from the Congress to form Nationalist CongressParty as he refused to accept the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi.
The two stalwarts of Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party’sMayawati and her mentor Kanshi Ram, contested that election separately. They supported the Congress-ledUnited Progressive Alliance only after the latter emerged as the largest group.
NO ONE IS INFALLIBLE
Nineteen years down the memory lane the situation is somewhat similar. The ousters of Indira Gandhi in1977, Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 and Vajpayee in 2004 indicate that no one is infallible.
In such a situation claiming that Narendra Modi would easily overcome the challenge posed by thecombine opposition force under the banner of INDIA amounts to ignoring the ground reality. Hispopularity, as mentioned above, is definitely not more than that of Vajpayee-Advani combine. In spiteof Trinamool Congress, Janata Dal (United), Shiromani Akali Dal, Shiv Sena, Biju Janata Dal, AIADMK,National Conference, etc. as alliance partners, the NDA could win only 181 seats, more than 100 less thanthe previous 1999 poll. The BJP’s tally was merely 139. Once again this was the result when theopposition alliance was more or less confined to Bihar and Tamil Nadu and not a pan-India phenomenon asnow.It is because of this reason that the saffron camp is feeling jittery.
It may be that at the time of seat adjustment the Trinamool Congress, Left parties and Aam Aadmi Partycreate some problem in Bengal, Kerala, Punjab and Delhi. Yet what is worrying for the BJP is that itis not going to capitalise much on this issue in Kerala, Punjab and West Bengal. In the post-pollscenario, be it the Left parties, TMC or AAP, they are bound to join the anti-BJP alliance.
On the other hand, the BJP too has its quota of problems. For example, there is widespreaddisenchantment in the Shinde camp of rump Shiv Sena after the joining of the NDA by the breakawayfaction of NCP led by Ajit Pawar. The BJP rank and file too is finding it difficult to overcome thischallenge as till June 27, 2023 none else but PM Modi was hurling all sorts of allegations on AjitPawar. And all his colleagues who have now crossed over.
In Bihar, the two factions of Lok Janshakti Party, one led by Union Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras andthe other by his nephew Chirag Paswan are openly out to destroy each other. In Tamil Nadu, the BJP isfinding very difficult to carry on both the AIADMK general secretary E.K. Palaniswami and recentlyousted O. Paneerselvam.