By Nitya Chakraborty
New winds are blowing in the political landscape of the country, seemingly contradictory, for the emergence of a strong front of the opposition parties to fight the BJP in the coming assembly as also in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. The latest positive development for the opposition is the 10 month old agitation of the farmers in North India against the three farm laws.
This movement has imparted a new dimension to the anger against the Uttar Pradesh Government Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as also the BJP as a party, after the killings of eight farmers on October 3 violence at Lakhimpur Kheri. The post-October 3 developments have come as a big jolt to the Centre as the Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra is involved and his son Ashish Mishra has been arrested. Simultaneously, the Supreme Court has taken note of the violence and is hearing petitions which are highly critical of the performance of the Yogi Government on law and order.
The assembly elections to UtP and four other state assemblies Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are scheduled for February/March 2022.The impact of the farmers agitation will have political consequences in UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand during the assembly elections and now, the central leadership of the BJP is making all efforts to repair the damage. The Samajwadi Party and the Congress are making all efforts to take political capital out of the sudden windfall for them.
This positive development for the opposition has been followed in the recent days by the spats between the Trinamool Congress and the Congress. It was decided on August 20 to hold agitations throughout the country from September 20 to 30 on the basis of a 11 point programme.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during her five day visit to Delhi at that time gave indication of that. The leadership issue would be decided later and all the anti-BJP parties should focus on struggles against BJP and winning the coming assembly elections by defeating the BJP. In all these states, excepting UP, the Congress is the main opponent of BJP and it is the main responsibility of the Congress to defeat the BJP.
Herein comes the clash between Trinamool and the Congress. Mamata in her latest piece in TMC periodical Jago Bangla has openly accused the Congress of weakening the opposition for not doing enough to take on BJP in elections. She points out that TMC is more capable than the Congress to take on BJP which means that TMC can be the real leader in the fight of the opposition against the Congress. Her party leaders are now openly tweeting and writing that Rahul has failed and Mamata is the only acceptable leader in the country to take on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is a big departure from her stand indicated during her Delhi visit in August this year.
Now what calculations are there behind Mamata’s sudden volte face? It makes sense though apparently it means a sort of misunderstanding and rivalry with the Congress, but this rivalry has very limited impact if this can impart a sort of animal spirit in the Congress. Mamata has certainly in mind the 1996 scenario after Lok Sabha elections. In those elections, the BJP got 161 seats, Congress 140 and Janata Dal 46. Congress was the second largest party but the BJP had more numbers than the Congress and the Congress was forced to support the JD led government of non-Congress parties. Congress was quite strong at that time as it got 28.8 per cent of the votes as against 20.29 per cent votes received by the BJP.
As against the Congress, the ground reality shows that the regional parties will continue to do better where these parties are the major ones to take on BJP and not the Congress. Trinamool surely will improve its position since the political base in Bengal has been slipping away from the saffrons. Similarly, RJD, DMK will do better. As regards the ruling regional parties, TRS, YSRC and BJD, there is no possibility of BJP gaining in these states. In fact BJP will lose in these states compared with its present strength. Similarly BJP will lose in Maharashtra to the MVA combination.
At the same time, the Congress will lose its existing Lok Sabha seats in many constituencies to the Left Front in Kerala. The Congress has to bring about massive improvement in its tally in the states where the Party is the major opposition facing the BJP. As it seems now, it is a Herculean task for Congress to cross the figure of 100 in 2024 Lok Sabha elections from the present figure of 52.
The crucial test of the BJP is in UP which is having 80 seats in the Lok Sabha. BJP got huge seats in 2019 but that was unusual and not a normal reflection of the voting base of the BJP. The assembly elections in early 2022 will give some indication and if SP can capitalise the resentment among the farmers, there is a good possibility of SP improving its position substantially.
The Congress under Priyanka is trying its best to expand base, but the party organisation is in bad shape and as Prashant Kishor has said that just a single agitation against the Lakhimpur Kheri killings will not bring any major electoral gains to the Congress as this requires long term organisational work and UP is a huge state’.
Among the opposition leaders, M K Stalin and Tejaswi Yadav are both friendly with Rahul and Mamata. They can play a role in sorting out the differing perceptions of both the leaders. Earlier also, the Congress and TMC had differed, but they came together against the BJP after the last assembly elections.
(IPA)
