Alliances and pacts: Only way forward for Oppn

Has opposition unity been further crippled by the severe reverses suffered by the Congress party in four of the five state Assembly polls of which the results were out on Sunday?

That’s the question uppermost on most people’s minds as the INDIA alliance postponed its meeting, which was scheduled for December 6, to the third week of the month.

Reason: Most senior leaders including chief ministers Mamata Banerjee and MK Stalin besides Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav expressed their difficulty in attending the Delhi meet.

Stalin is busy fighting the floods in his state while Mamata and Akhilesh had other ‘engagements’ to attend to.

So the meet of opposition leaders was turned into a brainstorming conclave at Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence to discuss the ongoing parliament session.

There is no doubting the fact that the opposition parties are battling the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as a united whole on the floor of parliament; Opposition members have been quite vociferous on issues such as the proximity of industrialist Gautam Adani to the bigwigs in power, price rise, the targeting of opposition leaders by central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI and the bias against non-BJP ruled states as far as grants and aid are concerned.

But there is a huge difference between unity on the floor of parliament and fighting the national polls, now just four months away.

The defeat the Congress suffered in the three Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh is no doubt a blow to hopes of stopping the saffron juggernaut in 2024.

But that does not mean all hope is lost and the opposition should hang up its boots even before the battle has begun. From Kerala and Tamil Nadu to Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, from Karnataka to West Bengal, the opposition spirit is still alive and throbbing and there is not much the BJP can hope to do to cut into seats held by parties like the Congress, TMC and AAP in these states.

Stitching together alliances of INDIA parties in these states will go a long way in stopping the BJP and convincing it that it still has a long way to go in becoming a truly national party with its sphere of influence largely spread across the Hindi heartland and the North-East.

It is also a fact that the difference in vote share of the Congress and BJP in the bigger states is only marginal which became evident in the recent polls.

A firming up of unity and the putting up of common candidates in states and constituencies where it is feasible, will go a long way in convincing the electorate that they can look forward to an alternative other than that the BJP or its NDA partners have to offer.

The reverses in the ‘mini general election should be convincing enough for the Congress to realise that it is no longer the party it was two decades ago in 2004 when it swept to power beating the BJP which was in power then at the Centre.

Many senior leaders have left for greener pastures and several states have slipped out of the party’s grasp in recent years leaving it in power on its own in only two states - tiny Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.

You could blame it on leadership woes or on more astute political strategising by the BJP but at the end of the day, the Congress and the Opposition have never looked as disheartened as they are now.

Alliances and tie-ups are the only way forward and the sooner opposition leaders realise this, the better for them.

If this does not happen, the saffron surge we witnessed in the recent polls is only bound to get stronger spoiling any hopes of an alternative government in Delhi in months from now.