Realpolitik has come to the fore in the Congress with Rahul Gandhi
playing an increasingly bigger role in the formulation of party policies and relations with allies. In the Lok Sabha elections, he was instrumental in spurning tie-ups with regional parties said to be dominant in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Initially, it looked that the Congress will be the loser in the game, but ultimately the party came up on top especially in Uttar Pradesh, where it could make its presence felt at the cost of the two dominant parties in the state – Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. In Bihar, the Congress could not come up with a spectacular performance on the lines of Uttar Pradesh, but it had the satisfaction that regional satraps like Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and Lok Janshakti Party president Ramvilas Paswan also had to bite the dust, literally. Their game of ganging up and denying the Congress a fair share in the allocation of seats came a cropper. After the elections, if Lalu Yadav and Paswan had any thought that they would be rehabilitated, it soon vanished. Lalu Yadav was denied a berth in the Union Cabinet though he had won personally and was claiming that his party was at that time a constituent of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, UPA, though it may have fought against the Congress in Bihar.
Significantly, both Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Yadav were forced by circumstances to offer support to UPA-II from outside, though they were not approached formally by the Congress.
In a significant statement last week, Rahul Gandhi has spelt out the Congress policy on entering into alliances at the state level. Speaking in Chennai, he said that the alliances will be need-based, situation-specific and not at the cost of the party’s long term interests. More specifically, he said that it would be a shallow idea to assert that the Uttar Pradesh concept can be applied universally across the country.
The Assembly by-elections last week, whose results would be available today, and the Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh will perhaps be the second step in the evolving Rahul Gandhi view of allying with other parties in the coalition era. In the Assembly by-elections, the Congress went it alone in Bihar despite feelers from the RJD and the Lok Janshakti Party for forging an alliance to give a united fight to the ruling Janata Dal United-BJP coalition in the state.
Reports say that the Congress is unlikely to tie up with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s party in Jharkhand during the state elections likely to take place towards the end of the year or early next year. The virtual isolation of the RJD, the Congress hopes, will expand its political space at the cost of the regional outfit.
In the coming Assembly elections, the Congress hopes to put up a good show in Haryana as well as Arunachal Pradesh because of a disorganized opposition.
In Maharashtra, the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are engaged in hard negotiations to work out a seat-sharing accord for next month’s Assembly elections. The signals are that the Congress is having its way as the NCP options are limited. The Congress wants the NCP to contest about 20 seats less than the number it contested during the last elections held in 2004. It is possible that an agreement may be reached on the seat-sharing with the NCP contesting 110 odd seats while the remaining 170 odd seats fall in the Congress share. The NCP does not have too many options. Its political space has shrunk with its poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections held this year. The party knows that if it is not able to work out a seat-sharing pact with the Congress, it may be virtually wiped out and lose its relevance in the state as well as at the Centre. The Congress, of course, would also be a loser in such a scenario, but the impact of the development would be much less on it. The only possible option in the event of no agreement being reached with the Congress would be for the NCP to reach out to the Shiv Sena, but that has its own hazards. The Shiv Sena and the BJP have already almost worked out a seat-sharing agreement and would find it difficult to accommodate the NCP. In any case, an alliance with the saffron parties would damage the credibility of the NCP as a secular party.
In the coming Assembly elections, the Congress hopes to put up a good show in Haryana as well as Arunachal Pradesh because of a disorganized opposition. In Haryana, all the opposition parties are fighting separately, giving a decided advantage to the Congress, which hopes to repeat its stellar performance of the Lok Sabha elections when it had won nine out of the total 10 seats from the state. In Arunachal Pradesh, several leaders belonging to the BJP have deserted their party and crossed over to the side of the Congress.
Jharkhand could have proved a bitter pill to swallow for the Congress, if elections were to take place there in October along with the Assembly polls in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh. The BJP, which is on a strong footing in the state, going by its performance in the Lok Sabha elections, has tried to build the pitch for holding early elections by allowing all its 22 legislators to quit their seats. But the Centre is expected to take its time on the dissolution of the state Assembly, which would set the stage for holding fresh elections. Observers expect that Assembly elections in Jharkhand may not take place before December or January. This would perhaps give the Congress the time to recover from its drubbing in the state in the Lok Sabha elections and formulate a strategy to turn the tables on the BJP.
Rahul Gandhi’s southern visit has created a flutter as it has been seen in Tamil Nadu as the start of a possible move to revive the party in the state and take it out of the shadow of the dominant regional parties there – Karunanidhi’s DMK and Jayalalithaa’s All India Anna DMK. The Congress may find it difficult immediately to walk out of its alliance with the DMK in the state, but its leaders are certainly going to take steps to ensure that the party is able to stand on its own feet, if not in the near future, then at least somewhere on the horizon.
In another state - West Bengal - where the Congress perforce has to have an alliance to make its mark, the party’s options are limited. That is perhaps why Railways Minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is calling the shots as far as the alliance with the Congress is concerned. In the recently held Assembly by-elections in the state, she was able to have her way with her party getting both the seats and winning them. Though local leaders of the Congress wanted to contest at least one of the two seats where elections were held, they were overruled by the party high command.
The Congress strategy in West Bengal appears to be to work for ending the three-decade long rule of the CPI(M)-led Left Front. The party is also hoping perhaps that the Trinamul Congress may merge with the Congress in course of time. However, at present, it appears unlikely.
Rahul Gandhi’s emphasis on need-based alliances means that if in future there is no need, the Congress will not think twice before dumping the allies. Even in the past, parties like the Samajwadi Party and others have accused the Congress of following a “use-and-throw’’ policy in so far as allies are concerned. But they should not complain as in politics, there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.
