Congress president Rahul Gandhi intends to apply the Karnataka formula to stitch regional alliances in every state to try and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party to return to power in 2019. In Karnataka, the Congress stopped the BJP’s ascension to power by giving a small regional party, Janata Dal Secular (JDS) the post of Chief Minister.
The Congress’ core team, which works in the background and reports to Rahul Gandhi, has identified 340+ seats in 11 states where it can either form an alliance with a regional party or mediate an understanding between two regional parties to field a consensus candidate against the BJP. Sources in the Congress said that contrary to media reports, Rahul was willing to forego the party’s role of big brother in an alliance and conveyed to his advisors that he was open to being the junior partner in state specific alliances, or even at the national level to secure the larger objective of defeating the BJP in 2019.
Congress, which contested 464 seats in 2014 and won 44, is also exploring the possibility of contesting on a greatly reduced number of seats in order to focus on constituencies where it has decent prospects. Party insiders feel that by doing so they would achieve the twin objective of ensuring a focused campaign and also avert wasteful expenditure of funds and divide anti-BJP votes.
According to sources, Rahul, by now, has realised that the Congress lacks a well-oiled organisation in all the states and is convinced that the party will have to depend on the personal “charisma” of local leaders and the organisational strength of other parties to come to power at the Centre in 2019, as well as in the states that face Assembly elections before that.
The oath-taking ceremony of H.D. Kumarswamy in Bengaluru on Wednesday, which was attended by most Opposition parties, was used by Rahul Gandhi to send out the message that he was ready to support any party and give it the sweetest pie, even if it is numerically weak, in order to stop PM Modi.
“Our number crunching clearly shows that the BJP is winning because the Opposition is fighting amongst itself. Even during the so called Modi wave in 2014, the BJP was not able to win more than 33% votes overall,” a Congress functionary said.
However, in 2014, BJP, on its own did substantially well in states such as Arunachal Pradesh (46%), Assam (36%), Bihar (29.86%), Goa (54%), Gujarat (60%), Haryana (34%), Himachal Pradesh (53%), Jammu and Kashmir (32.65%), Karnataka (43%), Madhya Pradesh (54%), Rajasthan (55%), Uttar Pradesh (42%), Jharkhand (40%), Uttarakhand (56%), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (48%), Chandigarh (42%), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (49%), Daman and Diu (54%) and Delhi (46%).
In Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats, Rahul has asked party secretaries to work on a tie-up with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In the 2014 elections, the Congress had got 60 lakh votes, while receiving 7.5% of the total votes cast. The BSP in the same election had secured 1.59 crore votes (20%), SP 1.79 crore (22% votes), while the BJP with 42.6% vote share had got 3.43 crore votes, but was able to win on 71 seats.
“For us, UP is the focus and if we are able to stitch an alliance with the SP and the BSP it will give a fillip to the anti-BJP front. If the BSP, SP and the Congress had fought together, the BJP would not have been able to win 71 seats. You have to keep in mind that in many seats the anti-BJP parties ate into each other’s votes, which helped the BJP candidates,” a Congress source said.
The Sunday Guardian had carried a report on 20 May, titled Karnataka opens door to anti-Modi alliance in 2019, which said that Rahul Gandhi was open to any idea, in any form, to dent BJP’s powers even at the political cost to Congress.
In Maharashtra, which has 48 seats, apart from erstwhile UPA ally Nationalist Congress Party, the Congress is looking to mend relations also with the Shiv Sena, which is at loggerheads with the BJP. Even if the Congress is not able to form a formal alliance with the Shiv Sena, it will explore friendly fights in seats where the Sena is strong in order to defeat the BJP candidate. The combined vote share of Congress (18%), NCP (16%) and Shiv Sena (20.82%) was more than what the BJP (27%) got in 2014.
“Uddhav Thackeray is not Bal Thackeray and has shown his willingness to come to a mutual understanding as he is facing an existential crisis if he continues to be rigid. BJP has treated him like a doormat and if we are able to convince him that we are even willing to let him lead this anti-BJP front, there is no reason that he will not support us,” a senior party functionary claimed.
In West Bengal, which sends 42 MLAs, the agreement will be done directly between Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, without the involvement of any intermediary, as they share an excellent rapport and even in the worst of times, have not attacked each other directly.
According to a Bhopal based party spokesperson, an alliance between the Congress and the BSP was on the cards in Madhya Pradesh. “In MP’s Lok Sabha seats that border UP, BSP has a strong presence. BSP had got 11 lakh votes in MP in 2014. We also believe that a tie-up with the BSP will help us in other regions where Dalits are present in large numbers,” he said.
A pre-poll alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, a state with 40 seats, was almost but done, said party sources. “The major chunk of the seats will be contested by the RJD. There is nothing wrong in that as we have a very poor organisational set-up in Bihar and we accept that. Our main objective is to consolidate and then strengthen our organisation. If we keep harping on minor issues that we are a national party and should be given more seats then no regional party is going to join hands with us. Rahul Gandhi is taking a very pragmatic approach as he is going by the need of the hour,” said a senior Congress leader. According to political observers, the present alliance between Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United and BJP in Bihar is unlikely to survive till 2019.
“We are ready to shed the misgiving that we are a national party, and, hence, we should be treated like one. As of now, if we go by our legislative strength and our MPs, we are at best a very powerful regional-national party. Rahul’s new approach needs to be appreciated as he is doing practical politics rather than ‘Delhi durbar’ kind of politics, which our leaders have been often accused of,” a Congress general secretary said, requesting anonymity.
Congress is also going to forge anti BJP fronts in Tamil Nadu (39 Lok Sabha seats) and Karnataka (28 seats), Andhra Pradesh (25 seats), Telangana (17 seats), Jharkhand (14 seats) Haryana (10 seats where it will join hands with INLD) and Jammu and Kashmir (six seats).