Regional leaders need more coherence to build federal front

After Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur elect new legislative assemblies, 10 more states will go to polls before the 2024 parliamentary polls and, of them, Telangana is the only large state, which is ruled by neither the BJP nor the Congress, but a regional party – Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS). The BJP, however, has since 2019 replaced the Congress as the main opposition to the ruling TRS in the state. So, the TRS president and the state’s Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s recent attempt at shedding his earlier pusillanimity towards the BJP to shape an anti-BJP federal front isn’t a surprise.

As Rao and his West Bengal counterpart, Mamata Banerjee, try stitch an anti-BJP front, somewhat curious is her aversion of the Congress, particularly its first family. Privately, leaders of the TRS and Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) agree that a non-BJP front or the proposed non-BJP chief ministers’ conclave on federalism would be a non-starter without the participation of the Congress. The CPI (M) has said as much publicly. The communist party is of course wary of Banerjee, its arch-rival in West Bengal, taking the lead of any such putative formation. It rather wants the DMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin to lead the effort.

Also Read: Satraps unite against Modi Govt

Congress: pariah or prerequisite

After the TMC’s recent poaching of Congress leaders in the northeastern states and Goa, Stalin would be more acceptable to the grand old party. But as a TRS leader explained, the onus is on the Congress to assert itself electorally in the next 18-odd months, of course if it wishes to lead the opposition unity in 2024.

The regional parties have shown they can withstand the BJP’s onslaught. But the Congress has to prove its mettle. The Congress will also have to confront the BJP in at least six – Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – of the 10 state assembly polls to be held by December 2023.

If the Congress losses Punjab to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on March 10, it would reinforce the perception that it is in terminal decline. It would also queer the pitch for the proposed anti-BJP front. The Congress has over the years resisted the AAP’s inclusion in the opposition unity efforts.

Till the Congress shows signs of revival, Banerjee and other regional leaders will not give up their claim to the leadership of the new front.

In September, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar had likened the Congress to an impoverished ‘zamindar’, or a feudal lord, who could no longer maintain his ‘haveli’ (fiefdom). “There are battles to be fought until 2024 and beyond, which the Congress currently is too feeble to fight. So, we, the regional parties, need to hang together, or we shall all hang separately,” the TRS leader said.

These battles include the presidential and vice-presidential elections later this year. Then there are issues of Centre-State relations and the role of governors. The regional parties also oppose the Centre’s proposal to change the All India Service Cadre rules.

It has enthused Banerjee, Pawar and others that the Samajwadi Party under Akhilesh Yadav, even if it were to lose to the BJP in the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, is on the upswing, as is the Rashtriya Janata Dal that a young Tejashwi Yadav leads in Bihar. The two Yadavs had experimented with allying with the Congress, but little benefit accrued to their respective alliances.

Also Read: Didi, KCR and Stalin look to stitch anti-BJP front

Banerjee versus Gandhis

Jayanta Ghosal, a journalist who has recently authored “Mamata: Beyond 2021”, says the TMC’s decision to contest the assembly polls in Goa wasn’t Banerjee’s, but election strategist Prashant Kishor’s. “Banerjee is not anti-Congress. She respects Sonia Gandhi but has a communication gap with Rahul Gandhi. What she wants after the culmination of the UP assembly polls is a discussion on restructuring the UPA and that it should have a new convenor,” he said. Others, like political analyst Rasheed Kidwai, disagree. He said that Banerjee distancing herself from Kishor was a face-saver after the embarrassment in Goa.

Banerjee is a multiple-term Lok Sabha MP and a three-term chief minister. She is unwilling to accept Rahul Gandhi’s leadership. But the TMC’s footprint, unlike even a shrinking Congress, is restricted to West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats and perhaps a handful more across the northeast. She would do well to remember BSP chief Mayawati’s example from a decade back. In 2009, the CPI(M)’s Prakash Karat convinced Mayawati, then the UP CM, to be the prime ministerial face of the third front. The Congress scored a resounding win in the Lok Sabha polls, while Mayawati lost UP in 2012.

The Vijayawada conclave

The proposed opposition chief ministers’ conclave has a precedent. In May 1983, N T Rama Rao, the Andhra Pradesh CM and Telugu Desam Party chief, hosted 24 opposition leaders of 14 political parties to stitch an alliance against the Indira Gandhi-led Congress for the Lok Sabha polls, which were 18-months away.

The Vijayawada conclave was the first time 14 ideologically disparate non-Congress political parties, including the communist parties and the BJP, got together at one place and issued a joint statement. Two months before, in March 1983, Karnataka CM Ramakrishna Hegde had called a meeting of his southern counterparts to discuss issues of federalism.

The circumstances were somewhat similar. With a brute majority at the Centre, the Congress was misusing Article 356. Just as the BJP now, the Congress did not rule several key states then, including three big southern states.

The events of 1983 formed the bedrock of the eventual rise of regional parties in national politics. The aspirations of regional elites to share the spoils that the Congress had controlled since independence helped the rise of regional parties.

It culminated with the National Front and United Front governments. A similar process is underway as the BJP rule has increased the centralisation of decision-making.

However, if Banerjee, Stalin, Rao and other regional leaders want to build a new federal front now, they will need to have programmatic coherence among their parties.

Watch the latest DH Videos here: