Migratory regional parties displaying contrasting reflexes

New Delhi: Delhi’s political weather offices are keeping a close watch on the contrasting reflexes of the migratory regional parties after the assembly election results and in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.

If the Congress-led opposition camp has netted two more allies in the last one week — Upendra Kushwaha-led RLSP and Mukesh Sahni-led VIP — the ruling BJP is being increasingly pushed around by the alliance partners, who are getting bolder by the day.

Ram Vilas Paswan, a seasoned bargainer, has skilfully used his LJP to publicly blackmail the mighty BJP leadership into promising a Rajya Sabha seat for himself before agreeing to a seatsharing deal in Bihar. BJP’s biggest ally Sena has sharpened its attacks on PM Modi. In fact, Sena chief on Monday loaned a Congress president Rahul Gandhi-patented “chowkidar chor hai” slogan to hit out at the PM from a rally. Thackeray’s sniper attacks have surpassed Sena’s earlier act of not voting for the NDA government, of which it is a partner, during the Lok Sabha vote on opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion.

“During the UPA-II regime, some of our allies indeed differed with government policies and some even left the coalition, yet none of them made a frontal attack on Manmohan Singhji or Soniaji,” said a senior opposition leader, adding how big a price the BJP may have to pay to placate Sena — “more LS and assembly seats, or even cutting short the life of the Fadnavis regime”.


Incidentally, none of the senior leaders of BJP, which used to “control” allies during the best part of the Modi regime, has so far responded to the Thackeray attack. Moreover, Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s verbal googlies have turned the pitch livelier.

While Lok Sabha elections are still many months away, the Congressled front seems to have become the favourite seasonal destination for the migratory regional parties. So far, the BJP has lost four allies — N Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP, Raju Shetty-led Swabhiman Paksha, RLSP (all have joined the Congress camp) and Mufti-led PDP, which is willing to join the Congress bloc but the invite is missing. In addition, parties such as Deve Gowdaled JDS, Sharad Yadav-led LJD and Jitan Manjhi-led HAM are already in the opposition camp. Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP is lobbying hard to ink a Delhi alliance with the Congress, which also has to take a call on whether to align with Trinamool or Left in Bengal, or go it alone to deny the BJP opposition space there.

The suspense in UP is no more about the SP and BSP forming an anti-BJP front, but whether Congress, too, will be part of it. This even as the Congress and its pre-2014 estranged partners, NCP (Maharashtra), RJD (Bihar) and DMK (Tamil Nadu) are back in each other’s company.

Ever since coalition politics has come to rule Raisina Hill, “alliances win elections” remains political players’ catchphrase here.