Congress conundrum

Tejashwi Yadav has set the cat among the pigeons in the proto front which aims to topple the BJP

Given his father and political mentor Lalu Prasad's excellent personal equation with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul and accommodative stance towards the Congress ever since the turn of the millennium, it is no surprise that Tejashwi Yadav, who has emerged as the face of Lalu's RJD in recent months, would make sympathetic noises apropos the role of the Congress in the anti-BJP front of Opposition parties which is a work in progress. His call to “strengthen the Congress” where it has a strong presence and is the main electoral challenger to the BJP, from the perspective of the much-talked about/up a prospective Opposition alliance, however, has some merit. But it is an issue that will strain the dynamics of the combined Opposition given its composition.

In stating unambiguously that if Congress has the numbers Rahul Gandhi has a perfectly valid claim to the post of Prime Minister in the event of a setback for the ruling BJP in the 2019 General Election and, further, basing his assessment on an admission that Third Front type coalitions have come a cropper in the past when the Congress has not been a part of them whilst the UPA-I/II experiment worked because that party as its largest component was leading it, Tejashwi would have upset many a regional satrap. There are many who would be thinking that it's alright for the Lalu clan scion to say what he did given in his State of Bihar the Congress is more or less a spent force. But in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and the North-eastern States the Congress is either the main political organisation taking on the BJP or is in locked in a content with regional forces for that position. If the assessment of the anti-BJP forces is even halfway correct, and there is an erosion of support for the ruling dispensation, the Congress does stand to gain a number of seats. It is also very likely to be the largest anti-BJP party by a distance, whatever the results of the Lok Sabha poll.

In such a situation, it behooves senior Opposition leaders to apply their mind on the role the Congress will have in an anti-saffron grand alliance, as it were. Not just for their own clarity but also to give the electorate a fair dekko at the contours of a possible alternative to the BJP rather than just trying to cobble - or should it be cook? — something up post-poll. In a sense, it would not be a bad thing at all for the country if the Opposition parties were upfront about including the Congress in their plans to present a political alternative to the BJP for two reasons. First, it would push India towards a two-party/alliance system that over time would hopefully also reflect a coalescing of ideologies/policies within each alliance as well as mark out clear blue water between them to present a clear choice to the voters. Secondly, it would end once and for all the dreams some in the Congress still have of making a grand comeback of the single-party rule kind. Oh, and it would make the 2019 Lok Sabha election a real humdinger.