Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 18: Both the BJP-led NDA and the opposition bloc INDIA suffered setback in the unity move among their respective alliance partners on Monday with fissures coming out in the open highlighting the contrasting interests between the so-called “like-minded parties.”
While the setback in the opposition bloc was more predictable as it was trying to bring on one platform various parties who had been fighting elections against each other in different states, the crack developed between the BJP and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu was unexpected.
Irked by the BJP state president K Annamalai’s rude criticism of the former chief minister late CN Annadurai, the mentor of AIADMK founder MGR after whom the party has been named, the AIADMK on Monday declared that its alliance with the BJP was “off for now.” “We will decide on the alliance before the election,” AIADMK leader D Jayakumar said underscoring that he was voicing the party’s stance on the issue. Top BJP sources, however, said the matter would be sorted out.
“Annamalai is unfit to be the BJP’s state president… He speaks ill of late leaders only to project himself,” said Mr Jayakumar, referring to the state BJP chief’s comments about party icon J Jayalalithaa that brought the alliance to a breaking point in June. At the time, the party had sought that the state BJP chief be restrained. The party workers would not tolerate any insult to the late chief minister, he said.
In March, Mr Annamalai had spoken against allying with the AIADMK for the 2024 election, leaving its senior leaders fuming. Despite friendly relations, Jayalalithaa had not formed an alliance with the BJP for a long time, viewing the party a misfit in Dravidian politics.
“Annamalai doesn’t desire alliance with AIADMK although BJP workers want it. Should we tolerate all this criticism of our leaders? Why should we carry you? The BJP can’t set foot here. Your vote bank is known. You are known because of us,” the former minister told reporters.
The state BJP chief is known for dividing his time equally to needle the ruling DMK and ally AIADMK — his party’s only ally in the state. It has raised doubts in the AIADMK camp whether the former IPS officer is acting as the mouthpiece of the party’s central leadership, which is raring to create a niche in the state ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
The AIADMK has lost all elections it had fought in alliance with the BJP including the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 assembly elections. The party has been increasingly looking at the BJP as a liability.
In the INDIA camp, the CPI(M) expectedly has sounded trouble deciding against having any truck with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal while maintaining equal distance with the BJP. In Kerala, where it is the ruling party, it is in constant fight with the Congress and is unlikely to agree to share seats with its rival in the southern-most state. The CPI(M) is also learnt to have decided against sending its representative to become a member in the 14-member coordination committee of the INDIA, the top decision making body of the opposition alliance in respect of campaign organisation and seat-sharing issues.
The CPM has decided to maintain a distance from “both the BJP and the Trinamool” in Bengal, exposing the fault lines in the opposition alliance that aims to fight unitedly in an attempt to defeat the BJP in next year’s national election. The decisions were taken at a meeting of the CPM’s politburo in Delhi over the weekend. The decision, however, “doesn’t negate the possibility of forging an alliance,” Politburo member Nilotpal Basu, a former Rajya Sabha member, said.
“There are differences (within INDIA Bloc), and it is a reality,” Nilotpal Basu said. “Before the Bengaluru INDIA bloc meeting, Sitaram Yechury made it clear that in West Bengal, we think the fight will be against both BJP and Trinamool, in Kerala there will be a fight between UDF and LDF. You cannot have an electoral adjustment at the national level, it can only happen at state level,” he said.
Mr Basu also defended the decision to stay away from the INDIA coordination committee, saying any organisational structure within INDIA would create an impediment in the way of expansion of the grouping. The CPM did not attend the INDIA coordination committee meeting last week; a seat was kept vacant in the 14-member panel.
The Left’s decision may not unsettle Mamata Banerjee, given her strong obvious discomfiture with the idea of sharing a stage with Left leaders. The CPM politburo’s statement after the meeting does not spell out these decisions. On record, it said it would work for the consolidation and expansion of the alliance.
“The Politburo decided to work for the further consolidation and expansion of INDIA bloc to strengthen the efforts to safeguard the secular democratic character of the Indian Republic, the Constitution, Democracy and People’s fundamental rights and civil liberties. This requires that the BJP must be kept away from controlling the union government and state power. The Politburo u decided to further strengthen these efforts,” said the statement.
The politburo said it also endorsed the party’s stand in the last three meetings of the INDIA bloc in Patna, Bengaluru and Mumbai to organise a series of public meetings across the country and to mobilize the people to ensure the defeat of the BJP in upcoming elections.
However, it did indicate its reservations over the INDIA bloc’s “organisational structures”. “While all decisions will be taken by the leaders of the constituents, there should be no organisational structures that will be an impediment for such decisions,” the statement said.
The CPM-Mamata Banerjee rivalry is just one of the complicated relationships that plague the opposition bloc formed in July with the name INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance). The other is the Congress vs Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) feud.
In another development in the INDIA camp, the decision of the coordination committee to hold its first public meeting in Bhopal in the first week of October, was scrapped by the Madhya Pradesh Congress leader Kamal Nath within three days. The reason – Kamal Nath, who heads the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, called out the hypocrisy of a unity extravaganza, at some cost to the party’s fragile finances, when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Samajwadi Party were declaring their own candidates for elections in the state later this year.
He conveyed his clear message to the leadership and committed the Madhya Pradesh Congress unit’s resources into launching seven “Jan Aakrosh (people’s angst) Yatras” across the state beginning on Ganesh Chaturthi day. He has also unequivocally distanced himself from Udhayanidhi Stalin’s critical remarks against Sanatana Dharma.
Leaders of states where the Congress does not have “dominance” in the Bloc also differ from the central leadership. West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Punjab’s leaders Amrinder Raja Warring and Pratap Singh Bajwa, Delhi’s Ajay Maken and of late, new Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajai Rai, have been sounding notes of caution on ties with parties which have grown essentially by poaching on Congress turf.
The uncertainties and the extreme regional postures of these partners of the bloc have been worrying Congress leaders at the state level though the central leadership has been rooting for the bloc, which was reiterated at the first meeting of the reconstituted Congress Working Committee (CWC) in Hyderabad last weekend. The vulnerability and fragility of the INDIA bloc is apparent.