Almost every winter session of Parliament sets off a firestorm of controversy, which inevitably delineates the contours of a campaign for the Opposition in the elections held in the following year. The last sitting of the year is also the most acrimonious, especially if it marks the end of a government’s five-year tenure and throws the ruling party or coalition and the Opposition into the combat zone of Parliamentary elections. Parliament is also a forum to not only put to the test the Opposition’s mettle in confronting the ruling party or coalition, but a reflection of its willingness to unite outside the House to fight the establishment, particularly one that is as powerful and apparently invincible as the BJP-led NDA.
After a tepid year in Parliament in which the BJP aced the Opposition on nearly every issue the latter raised and the Congress flunked in showing the way because it was trapped in its problems, the first signs of an accord of sorts were visible in December. It didn’t begin that way.
The newly christened Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) was at loggerheads with the Congress over the Hyderabad police raids on the party’s “war room”.
The Samajwadi Party skipped one of the first meetings convened by Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress president and Rajya Sabha Opposition leader, ostensibly to maintain its official distance from the party.
The Trinamool Congress Party did likewise, and in the process, three significant entities of an envisaged Opposition front seemed to withdraw.
However, China’s incursion in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang was not a matter that the Congress was willing to pass up, regardless of whether the Opposition was on board. After Sonia Gandhi denounced the government for refusing to allow a discussion over China and protested on Parliament’s premises, her remarks were the ballast the non-BJP parties looked for.
The TMC and the Janata Dal (United) were among those to join the demonstration. The BJP’s shadow, which dogged the Opposition earlier because of the fear that questions raised over a China-India face off might “demoralise” the armed forces, disappeared, but the Centre refused to yield to the demand for a discussion. The question is, will the Opposition cohere outside Parliament and persistently seek answers on China or look inwards at regional concerns?
Parliament is not the lasting answer to bring together a disparate Opposition which looks askance at the Congress’ ability to helm a coalition or is frankly disdainful of the Gandhis. Some regional chieftains harbour national ambitions, while others have scripted their rules of engagement with the BJP to keep the supply lines of central funding uninterrupted by political standoffs. Intra-Opposition partnerships are not necessarily dictated anymore by federal compulsions.
To get a sense of where the Opposition stands vis-à-vis the BJP, it is necessary to get granular, assess the states heading to polls in 2023 and see if they show the way for macro unity. Tripura, a dot on India’s map that rarely figured on pollsters’ radar until the BJP wrested it from the Left in 2018, is the first election-bound state. The BJP is prepping up in earnest. Last week PM Modi was in Tripura to announce projects worth ₹4,350 crore as if to emphasise the import of the BJP’s “double-engine” slogan, which has had mixed results. Still, there’s no reason to think that voters will not be swayed by such grandiose figures put out by the PM himself.
However, Tripura’s Opposition is not sitting still. On December 21, leaders of the CPI(M), Congress and descendants of freedom fighters got together under the banner of the “75 Years of Independence Observance Committee” with an appeal to save democracy, freedom and the Constitution from a “fascist assault”. Hyperbole apart, it is believed that the Left and Congress could have an “understanding” to combat the BJP despite a mutual history of conflicts and dissensions. Tripura is the first state where a notional Opposition unity will face its first test, although the Congress-Left Front battle lines remain sharply etched in Kerala.
In an election-crammed year, Telangana is bound to play a dampener because there is no way that the BRS, with its soaring national aspirations, and the Congress, will team up against a belligerent BJP. The push to make a common cause is not sufficiently robust. The Congress, depleted by defections, will not forfeit its Telangana space easily. The BRS fancies itself as a Congress competitor.
Unlike the BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao, Mamata Banerjee prudently decided to confine herself to West Bengal, the only political real estate she possesses. Her flights outside Bengal were grounded a little after takeoff, although she hasn’t abandoned her blueprint to grow in the northeast. Her electoral calculations for Assam and Tripura do not factor in the Congress.
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Undaunted by the setback in Gujarat—which he insists was a “breakthrough”—Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal thinks he has arrived nationally. Collaborating with the Congress is unthinkable for him. Like the BRS, the AAP is sanguine in the belief that to grow and enlarge, it must vanquish the Congress before confronting the BJP with all its might.
Uttar Pradesh, the political crucible, is where the Opposition needs to get together to challenge a near-hegemonic BJP but will not. The Congress might yield some ground to the Samajwadi Party as it did in the recent Mainpuri Lok Sabha bypoll, but that’s it. In the imaginary land where they live, UP’s non-BJP actors are convinced it’s still the Eighties and Nineties when the BJP was a player like the rest. As long as the BJP’s supremacy over UP remains, it’s a tad pointless to conclude that the playing field is levelled. Far from it. The pitch will be as hostile towards the Opposition as it was in 2014 and 2019.
Arrangements between the Opposition parties can be struck strategically, but is there a glue to bind the entities together? Secularism is a dead horse; in any case, most parties are too fearful of uttering the S word. Federalism is anathema to the Congress which is as committed to upholding a strong centre as the BJP. Economic policies? Again there’s no clarity because every non-BJP party wants investments, so veering Leftwards is non-pragmatic. With a year-and-a-half left for the next Parliamentary polls, the prospects do not look bright for the Opposition, any which way.
Radhika Ramaseshan
Columnist and political commentator