At around this time last year, the Opposition seemed to be in with a fighting chance to stitch together an alliance/seat-sharing arrangement that would pose a challenge to the BJP-led NDA for the 2024 General Election. Whether or not it would have prevented Prime Minister Narendra Modi from winning a third successive term, it certainly could have prevented the sweep now being predicted by pollsters and pundits alike for the ruling party.
The I.N.D.I.A. alliance launched in Bengaluru in July 2023 seemed to indicate that the Opposition brains trust had realised what had been obvious to most – that a fragmentation of the anti-BJP vote would need to be prevented if the saffron electoral juggernaut was to be halted in its tracks – or at least slowed down – come 2024. For a while, it actually seemed possible.
The presence of political heavyweights including Sonia Gandhi, MK Stalin, and Mamata Banerjee at the I.N.D.I.A. launch, and major regional parties including the RJD, Samajwadi Party, AAP, CPM, CPI, NCP (Sharad Pawar), and Shiv Sena (UBT) among others also open to reaching an understanding, did have the BJP concerned. From there, to the shambles the Opposition is in at present, has been a rather swift journey.
For leading lights of the Opposition, the operating adage appears to be success has many fathers but failure has a single parent, the Congress! The Grand Old Party has been blamed for having delusions of grandeur and being in denial about its diminished clout in the Indian political-electoral system, which may or may not be true, and more specifically for the failure of seat-sharing talks with numerous prospective allies.
That is where the Congress has been treated rather shabbily by the rest of the Opposition. The initial idea behind a Grand Opposition Alliance was that, as far as possible, there be a one-on-one contest against the BJP and its allies on all Lok Sabha seats. So, far, so good. But the methodology suggested to arrive at which party which would contest which seat, was that all I.N.D.I.A. alliance members would contest the seats their respective parties had won in the 2019 election, and a majority if not all seats in the states where they were the ruling or main Opposition party.
This was clearly an attempt to cut the Congress down to size. It does not take a genius to work out that with less than 50 sitting Lok Sabha MPs, and the Congress Party mainly ruling or occupying the status of the main Opposition in states where the BJP is phenomenally strong, the party would struggle to better its 2019 performance. There was clearly an element of trying to be too clever by half by non-Congress Opposition worthies.
Political logic and that of self-survival dictated that the Congress would, as it did, push back against this attempt to corner it by so-called allies. This led to delays in seat-sharing talks, and opportunistic regional parties jumping into the welcoming arms of the BJP-led NDA, which has once again grown in size as it does prior to most polls.
The Congress is to blame for creating many of the situations that the BJP has exploited over the past ten years, and its organisational-ideological degradation is evidence that it is paying for its sins, as it were. But the Congress is certainly not to blame for an Opposition in disarray seemingly ready to give a walkover to the BJP. The truth that Congress-baiters need to accept is that apart from the Grand Old Party, reduced as it is in both coherence of narrative and agitprop ability, there is no other major party in India that will never ally with the BJP.
Yes, the communists also fit the above framework except the Left parties are a very marginal electoral force today.At present, the electoral reality is that there is no pan-Indian party in play. For example, the BJP is negligible albeit making attempts to grow in the South, the Congress is missing in action from most of the North, and regional parties hold sway in large parts of the East.
Proof of the continued political relevance of the Congress is that the BJP recognises it as still the only nationwide political force which can, at some point, challenge it. That is not the Congress’ fault.
