WITH the general elections in India just a few weeks away, the addition of yet another candidate eyeing premiership has set the political landscape on fire.
The surprise move by Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal and chairperson of the All India Trinamool Congress, has forced political pundits to revisit their predictions for the upcoming polls. Compared to 201 seats held by Congress, 112 seats by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the present 552-member Lok Sabha (lower house of the Indian Parliament), Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TC) holds 19 seats. Naturally, this raises the question as to whether Banerjee can make it or not?
More than three-dozen parties are represented in the current Lok Sabha. Entry of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may add one more party in the next — the 16th Lok Sabha. Before the AAP led by Arvind Kejriwal entered the political stage, the BJP had already begun adding fire to its campaign by projecting Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.
Anna Hazare has signaled his support for Banerjee. A prominent Muslim cleric, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, has announced that Banerjee will make a better prime minister for a secular India than others. This also implies that secular Indians and Muslims are against having Modi as the next prime minister. Without doubt, the 2002 Gujarat carnage tagged with Modi’s political image restrains them from supporting him as India’s prime minister. But Banerjee is not the only politician to have recently surfaced as Modi’s rival. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been in the race for quite some time. Kejriwal is also on the move. Political noise being made about the possibility of a third front forming the next government has added names of several regional leaders to the race for the prime ministerial position. These include Janata Dal-United (JD-U)’s Nitish Kumar, who currently heads the Bihar government and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Mulayam Singh, whose party heads the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government.
Despite SP, JD-U and TC holding command of their respective state governments, their parties hold less than 50 percent of seats from their own states in the present Lok Sabha. This naturally raises the question, whose support are these parties really banking on to take the reins of the next Indian government at the center?
The same point can be made about the AAP. Without doubt, this party succeeded in ousting Congress from Delhi state government. But even if AAP repeats this success during Lok Sabha polls, it will have an extremely limited impact as Delhi sends only seven legislators to Lok Sabha. True, Kejriwal’s regional background may help his party in his home state that is Haryana, which is represented by 10 members in Lok Sabha. Even if AAP sweeps the Lok Sabha polls from Delhi and Haryana, it will be represented by only 17 members.
Does this imply that political frenzy being displayed by Modi will succeed in actually having the impact that is being projected? While it is easy to accept that Modi-wave may succeed in Gujarat, prospects of it having a similar impact in Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh (AP), Tamil Nadu (TN) and several other states are limited. In fact, JD-U’s decision to break alliance with BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) may lead to the latter winning lesser seats from Bihar. Of the 20 legislators from Gujarat, nine belong to the Congress. Modi-wave may help BJP win all the constituencies from Gujarat but the same phenomenon is not likely to occur in other states.
A lot of noise is being made over Congress being a major loser in parliamentary polls. Without doubt, since the emergence of regional parties, the era of Indian politics being dominated by Congress has been confined to history. Till Kejriwal joined the fray, the battle was being projected as between Rahul and Modi. However, if AAP’s domain is confined to Delhi and a little in Haryana, the key contestants at the center stage remain Rahul and Modi. There is the possibility of Congress gaining secular votes because of communal label attached with Modi’s image. But then other “secular” politicians, including Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and Mulayam Singh are also trying to do the same. Interestingly, as the election is drawing closer, greater noise is being made by more and more “secular” politicians against Modi’s communal image. In this maddening race for prime ministerial chair, as competition increases, the political battle may become tougher for both Rahul and Modi.
