Kalyani Shankar
It is well within its rights to expand its base and in times to come, go solo as the top brass believes in making the party electorally strong
The saffron party must slowly learn to live without its major allies now that its oldest partner, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), quit the BJP-led NDA alliance on Saturday. The BJP and the SAD had been partners even during the Jan Sangh days. However, with a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, the BJP's attitude now is “go if you want to leave.” That is why there are no efforts to mollify miffed allies as it was done during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era. There was a time in the eighties when it was difficult for the BJP to get allies but today Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a strong position and hence the alliance partners are not needed by the party anymore.
The BJP had five major allies till two years ago. They were the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Shiv Sena, the SAD, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). With the Bihar elections round the corner, the party is left with only the JD(U) as its major alliance partner now. The others are smaller parties. Out of all these NDA allies, the TDP was the first to leave in March 2018 over the issue of grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh. Soon after the TDP's departure, another one of the oldest allies, the Shiv Sena parted company in October 2019 on the issue of chief ministership in Maharashtra after the Assembly polls. The Sena formed the Government in the State under the Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) as partners. Now, the SAD too has left on the issue of the controversial farm Bills that were pushed through amid din and allegations of riding roughshod on the objections of the Opposition parties and allies alike.
The only partner the BJP itself dumped was the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). In any case, the BJP-PDP alliance was an uneasy marriage of convenience and the late PDP chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed termed it as “an alliance of the North Pole and the South Pole.”
The NDA partners had been unhappy with the BJP for long, claiming that they were not consulted or even informed about major issues. “Where is the NDA,” asks SAD chief Sukhbir Badal. The relationship under Modi has changed compared to Vajpayee's time when one of the partners was the convenor of the NDA while Vajpayee or later Advani were the chairmen of the alliance. There were NDA meetings on important issues. Though Modi has included the representatives of the allies, despite the BJP having a majority in both 2014 and 2019, there is no formal NDA structure now. However, the BJP needed them in the Rajya Sabha for pushing the Bills where it was in a minority.
The BJP, under the leadership of Modi has learnt the art of dividing the Opposition and pushing through even some controversial Bills like the recent farm ones and the earlier Citizenship Amendment Bill. Also, the Punjab elections are in 2022 and the next Lok Sabha polls are even further off, in 2024. Who knows what will happen by then? However, according to insiders, the BJP wants to improve its performance by going solo in the coming polls. The main grouse of the allies is that the BJP, which was the junior partner in Maharashtra and Punjab, has expanded its base in the last six years. Not only has it overtaken the allies, it has become the richest party, too. Notwithstanding the concerns of its partners, the BJP is aggressively pursuing its objective of coming to power in States where it is not in Government. The only aim of the party is to consolidate Hindu voters even further by eating into the votes of its alliance partners. It has a major presence in most big States and is now eyeing the South and the North-East for expansion. The saffron party has replaced the Left in Tripura and edged the Congress out in West Bengal and Odisha as the main challenger to the ruling party.
In the 552-member Lok Sabha, the NDA has 335 seats, of which the BJP alone has 303 representatives. It does not need partners in 334 seats and is dependent on allies in 212 seats. When the BJP came to power in 2014, it had only 23 Rajya Sabha seats but today, it has 87. So far, the party has managed to push even controversial Bills like the bifurcation of J&K and the Citizenship Amendment Bill by dividing the Opposition. The three farm reform Bills, too, were passed similarly.
The Modi regime wants to have ties in which the BJP stands to gain. This has mostly worked in the last six years. The BJP has overtaken the Sena in Maharashtra and in other States too it has improved its electoral chances. It is indeed well within its rights to expand its base and in times to come, go solo as the top brass believes in making the party electorally strong.
Is it not said that in politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies? The BJP, too, is banking on the old allies coming back to its fold and new allies joining it. If one looks at the coalition politics, which is practised by both the main parties — the Congress and the BJP — the Congress-led UPA too is not in a good shape.
(The writer is a senior journalist)
