|
Post-poll prospects impact pre-poll battles |
 |
The political scenario in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections presents a strange spectacle - parties running with the hare and hunting with the hound. Constituents of all three or four main formations in the electoral fray want to gain at the cost of other combines and also their partners in their own alliances, but are afraid to strike too hard at their adversaries. This is because perhaps for the first time in the country’s history, the political situation is so hazy that nobody can make a guess with any conviction about the situation that will emerge after the elections.
All political parties, of course, want to gain vis-‘-vis not only their opponents, but also their allies. This is the reason perhaps that has made forging of alliances and working out of seat-sharing deals such a hard task for the national parties, the Congress and the BJP. So far as the Congress is concerned, it has had to eat a humble pie in the seat-sharing negotiations with its UPA partners in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. In Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, the leading regional outfit in the state, was not prepared to concede anything more than 17 or 18 seats to the Congress out of the total 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The Congress had set its sights on contesting at least 24 seats, including some held in the present house by Mulayam Singh’s party. After months of negotiations, the two parties were nowhere near a settlement and are now fighting each other in most Lok Sabha seats, a scenario which is going to help their arch rival, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party.
In neighbouring Bihar, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav thought that the best way of taking on the Janata Dal United-BJP NDA combine in the state was by working out a pact with Ramvilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party. This way, he decided, is the route to checkmating the resurgent NDA in the state led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who has been banking on good governance. In the process, Lalu Yadav had no compunction in cutting the Congress to size by allocating it just three out of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. When the Congress walked out of the alliance with the RJD in the state, Lalu Yadav rubbed it in by saying that his offer of three seats to the Congress was based on ground realities.
The Congress has its own agenda of rebuilding the party base in the Hindi heartland where it has been marginalized over the past few decades. By putting up a large number of candidates in UP and Bihar, the Congress hopes to revive the dormant party machinery there. But the gamble is unlikely to pay off in the near term and may bear fruit only after five or ten years. Immediately, the Congress faces the sad prospect of not even retaining the 12 seats from UP and Bihar the party has in the present Lok Sabha.
The BJP situation is no better. In large parts of the country, the party has no presence. In the Hindi-speaking areas, where the BJP is a force to reckon with, it can make only marginal gains over its present strength. In other states, it has to depend on tie-ups with dominant regional players.
But the regional outfits are themselves not too sure which way the wind will blow in the coming elections. That is why the Samajwadi Party, the RJD and the LJP want to continue their association with the UPA, even though they are fighting against the Congress, which is heading the coalition at the Centre, in most parts of the country. Similarly, Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress party has an alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra and Goa, but is fighting the national party in other states and even having a tie-up with constituents of the fledgling third front or third alternative. Truly, Sharad Pawar is running with the hare and hunting with the hound.
The Congress also has no difficulties with the developing scenario as it knows that the support of other parties would be essential for regaining the reins of power at the Centre.
In the National Democratic Alliance, nobody can be certain of which way some of the constituents will go after the election results are out. It is quite clear that if an opportunity arises for Sharad Pawar to become the Prime Minister, Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena will ditch the BJP and plump for a new combine which helps in achieving the goal of having a Maratha occupying the top political position in the country. The Janata Dal United has made no secret of its unhappiness with the BJP’s Hindutva agenda and may not think twice if a secular alternative emerges, which protects its government in Bihar.
The Left which is trying to build up the third alternative may itself find left alone in the post-poll scenario if the regional outfits or some of them find a way to work out a power-sharing deal with the Congress.
The compulsions of becoming major stake holders in the new dispensation which will emerge after the elections is making various parties go soft not only on their partners in different combines, but also their adversaries. This is because nobody knows who will ally with whom after the elections.
|
