Jockeying and wheeling dealing for 2009 | Kamlendra Kanwar

Published on 12-01-2008 In National

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Jockeying and wheeling dealing for 2009

The Gujarat and Himachal assembly election results have silenced all talk of a mid-term general election with the Congress having got a drubbing and the BJP having emerged triumphant. The Congress-led UPA is now looking at elections at the scheduled time in April-May 2009.

The concentration now is on winning friends and influencing people. The UPA and the BJP-led NDA are now straining to retain their alliance partners and win over new ones. The Left too is not twiddling its thumbs. It has shown a recent inclination to help create a viable Third Front, an option that it had earlier spurned when the UNPA had approached it.

The recent fulminations of BSP supremo Mayawati against the Congress, virtually accusing that party of helping forces that are plotting her assassination, add a new dimension to her possible role in the run-up to the elections. Mayawati knows that she could hold the key in a hung Parliament, and her ambitions are soaring.

Both the Congress and the BJP are acutely aware that they cannot come to power on their own. Coalitions are a fact of life that they have to reconcile to and the more skillful they are in befriending other parties the better would be their chance to form the next coalition.

Elections to State assemblies in 10 states would be held in 2008 and that would give some indication of the way the wind is blowing. If recent elections are anything to go by, the Congress is not passing through the best of times. While it has a dearth of all-India leaders with a mass appeal, it's excessive reliance on Sonia and Rahul Gandhi is not yielding results as is being borne out repeatedly.

The party's defeats in Punjab, Uttaranchal, Himachal, U.P., and Gujarat have typically not led to any honest introspection. In the first three it was displaced from power while in U.P . and Gujarat it ended up no better than it was in the previous assemblies though there was much hype about how well it would do.

Anything that even obliquely and partially ascribes a defeat to the Sonia-Rahul factor is taboo in a party, which has always had a culture of extreme subservience. It is talked about in hushed tones but no one has the courage to speak up in party fora. By way of more a ritual and eyewash, other factors are identified and scapegoats found but by burying the inconvenient reasons under the carpet, an opportunity to derive benefits from honest soul-searching is squandered away.

Factionalism continues to plague the Congress party in various states and organizationally, the party lacks cadres and grassroots pyramidal structure. While Sonia Gandhi's entry into politics had galvanized a tired and ailing party a few years ago, it is fast getting back to square one with little energy left in it to grapple with new challenges.

Of the five major states that will go to polls this year, in only one, Delhi, the Congress is in power.

By all accounts, factionalism in the party against Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, and anti-incumbency could spell trouble for the party. Significantly, in the civic polls held in Delhi last April, the BJP made a virtual sweep, winning 164 of the 272 seats in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. The Congress secured a mere 69. Not unusually, Sheila Dixit and State party President Harsh Vardhan are at daggers drawn.

In Karnataka, the Congress has a major presence but with the State being under President's rule, it is difficult to speculate whether the victor would be the Congress, the BJP or the Janata Dal (S) of Deve Gowda or a combination of two of these. The BJP has an edge in so far as it was `betrayed' by the Janata Dal (S) in a manner that created some sympathy for it.

Three of the five major states that are going to polls---Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh---are currently under BJP rule but the Congress could well turn the tables on the BJP, taking advantage of the poor administration provided by the BJP governments there and the consequent anti-incumbency factor. This is truly an acid test for the Congress because failure to exploit the anti-incumbency mood in these states would convince the party's UPA allies that they are on a sinking ship.

The crucial factor in these states would be how successful the party is in reining in the dissidents who have the potential to nip all the positives in the bud.

In the five smaller states which go to polls this year the Congress is dominant in Meghalaya and in power also in Jammu and Kashmir where it is in tie-up with the PDP. In Tripura the ruling party is the CPI (M) while in Nagaland and Mizoram it is regional party fronts that are in the saddle. But these five states are of marginal importance considering that they together account for a bare 20 seats in the Lok Sabha.

The BJP has a lacklustre president in Rajnath Singh and has alienated sections of voters in states where it is in power. In factionalism too it is not far behind the Congress and in some states it is in fact ahead.

As the elections approach, there would be a BJP scramble to latch on to emotive issues but a BJP majority appears as improbable as a Congress one, without the support of allies.

With the Left unlikely to even maintain its current numbers thanks to anti-incumbency in Kerala and the Singur and Nandigram agitations in West Bengal, the real key to success will be the support of the regional players to the Congress and the BJP. As Mayawati sends out signals that the Congress cannot take it for granted, the Samajwadi Party is torn between its dislike of Sonia Gandhi and its reluctance to sup with the BJP, and the NCP looks to make hard bargains, there are imponderables in the likely 2009 scenario.

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