Congress working on pre-result tie-up to nix BJP's plan if NDA falls short

New Delhi: Congress is believed to be working on a strategy to upset the BJP’s applecart and complicate the equation for the President in case the National Democratic Alliance falls short of the halfway mark by even the slightest margin.

A ‘post-poll pre-result’ alliance strategy has been floated among the Congress brass and is currently under discussion with other potential allies after internal deliberations involving Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Ahmed Patel and Jairam Ramesh among others, sources told ET.

The strategy, which was developed on the basis of a ‘legally tenable formulation’ vetted by Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi, is inspired by the approach adopted by the Congress party in Karnataka where Congress and JDS struck an alliance just before the declaration of the final results.


The first move in this direction, sources said, will be to cobble together and declare a pre-result alliance over the next 24 hours or so. Discussions, it’s learnt, have already begun on this. The objective here is to ring-fence the anti-BJP coalition in a way that the NDA finds it difficult to locate more partners.

In case the NDA is short of numbers, sources said, the next step would be to stake a claim and simultaneously identify a leader.

This was exactly how Congress and JDS managed to keep BJP at bay in Karnataka, even after it emerged the largest party with 104 seats, just nine short of a majority.

The Karnataka governor had sworn-in BJP’s Yeddyurappa as he was the leader of the largest party but the Supreme Court intervened on opposition’s plea following a late night hearing and ordered immediate trust vote, without giving ‘more time’ to BJP as it would only lead to horse-trading.