Regional parties are showing mirror to national party Congress before Loksabha elections

The excitement for the General Elections 2024 is getting intense. The BJP and its alliance partners are rallying behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while the Congress wants to see the opposition rallying under the leadership of Rahul, but its opponents are not ready to accept Rahul as their leader. Uttar Pradesh remains the biggest problem for the Congress. Here neither Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav nor Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati is getting along with the Congress. It is not that the matter of ideology is coming in the way in these three parties, but because of the different ego and political power of the leaders of all the three parties, no one wants to hold anyone’s ‘hand’. Anyway, the Congress high command is not paying much attention to UP. Even Rahul Gandhi has completely disappeared from here after losing the Lok Sabha elections from Amethi in 2019. Same is the condition of Rae Bareli, the parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi. Meanwhile, the discussion of Priyanka Vadra’s contesting from Rae Bareli does happen every now and then, but her activism in UP can be seen only during the election time.

This contradiction with Congress is not happening only in UP and in many other states no one is ready to pay attention to Congress. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Telangana Chief Minister K.K. Chandrasekhar Rao etc. all have betrayed the Congress regarding the alliance for the Lok Sabha elections 2024. Especially the election results of the three states of Tripura-Mizoram and Nagaland have pushed the Congress even more on the backfoot. After the alleged success of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, the Congress was beginning to feel that the results of the above three states would herald the fortunes of the Congress and by the time the next year’s Lok Sabha elections come, Rahul would reach the Prime Minister’s chair. Among the big states, Bihar and Maharashtra are the only two states left where Congress remains a part of the alliance, but here also it is not able to walk with its terms.

About a year is left for the Lok Sabha elections. In such a situation, it is natural that various political parties have also intensified their preparations. Some time ago the National Executive meeting of BJP was held and recently the General Convention of Congress was held. Both the parties also tried to draw a straight line for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in these events. Meanwhile, the efforts of opposition unity also intensified, while the BJP did not seem much worried about the alliance, while in states like Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana BJP has not been able to get any major success so far. Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are also a source of some concern for him. On the other hand, when it comes to the efforts of non-BJP alliances, then definitely the main opposition party Congress appears to be at the center of these efforts. However, the Congress itself does not seem fully prepared for this. On the one hand, it talks about being ready to pay any price for opposition unity, on the other hand, it does not take seriously the efforts of allies like JDU leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for an alliance. Congress’s argument on this is that without it any political mobilization exercise against BJP is difficult. It is true that apart from being a national level party, Congress being the oldest party should also play an important role in opposition unity, but it does not seem to be happening. That is why the question of opposition unity has also become very complex.

However, talking about the Congress’s desire or compulsion for an alliance, there are some regional parties which do not have any problem with the leadership of the Congress and are working closely with the party even at present. Like JMM in Jharkhand and DMK in Tamil Nadu. It is another matter that despite having the status of a national party, the Congress has remained the B team of the state government at both the places. Similarly, the NCP and Uddhav Thackeray’s party in Maharashtra can also be placed in the category of parties which are ready to take Congress along, but both these parties do not consider Congress to be a winnable party. If we talk about Bihar, here Janata Dal United (JDU) and RJD are in Congress’s court, but with some ifs and buts. Similar is the situation of Congress with parties like SP, BSP and Janata Dal-Secular, with whom Congress has entered into an alliance in the past, but it did not bring much electoral benefit to any of them. Similarly, the Congress is at loggerheads with parties like Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha, Bharat Rashtra Samithi and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, which are in direct competition with the Congress in their political bastions. There are also parties like the Aam Aadmi Party which are working on a strategy to present themselves as an alternative to the Congress in the national scene.

The bottom line is that given the wide diversity of opposition parties and their interests, bringing them under one umbrella is not impossible, but difficult. In the present political scenario, to make any central grand alliance successful against BJP, some issues will have to be seriously considered. The first criterion would be the Common Minimum Programme. As of now, the situation is that the opposition parties, especially the Congress, are mainly engaged in making political gains by targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi or by making personal attacks on him, but this strategy has not been fruitful in the past as well. The results of the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections are proof of this. Instead of making personal attacks on Modi, the Congress and other anti-BJP parties would have done well to raise issues like inflation, unemployment and rising inequality which can be far more effective. If the opposition is able to present some solid arguments on an issue like rising inequality, then it can create an atmosphere in its favor by creating meaningful political discourse against the government. One of the challenges of the Grand Alliance is that in the event of an alliance, an acceptable leadership should be formed. Undoubtedly, Congress is the largest party in the opposition, but there is doubt in the opposition camp about its leadership. The leadership of Congress’s tallest leader Rahul Gandhi is not acceptable to the entire opposition camp.

However, it cannot be ruled out that in some states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, there is a direct contest between the BJP and the Congress, and here the poor performance of the Congress gives an edge to the BJP and weakens the opposition force. . The Congress will also have to counter the increasing dominance of the BJP in North-West India. A practical question also arises regarding any possible grand alliance that if such an initiative is successful in the assembly elections, it is not necessary that it will get the same success in the Lok Sabha elections as well. There are many examples of this from Uttar Pradesh to Bihar, Maharashtra and Karnataka and these are the states that have the majority of Lok Sabha seats.

-Ajay Kumar