Anil Anand
The battlelines for the impending Presidential elections have been drawn sooner than expected. There was no doubt about the ruling BJP making a calculated move, which is relevant to its electoral politics, in terms of selection of candidate for the country’s top job. Selection of Ms Draupadi Murmu, a tribal woman and former Governor of Jharkhand, is a master-stroke in more than one way as it perfectly suits the ruling party’s pronounced social engineering moves with an eye on coming round of assembly elections including Gujarat and of course the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
If ever there was a doubt it was about the opposition camp arriving at a decision on putting up a united candidate to challenge the might of the BJP and its allies. However, the opposition leaders sprang a surprise by affixing a seal on the name of former bureaucrat turned politician and an ex-minister of repute in the Vajpayee government, Yashwant Sinha. It was unlike the past chequered history on efforts at opposition unity hitting innumerable roadblocks.
Divided we stand and united we fall! This adage was first coined by a leading national magazine in the context of the then Janata Party coming down tattering after two and a half years rule at the Centre. The Janata Party had come to power defeating the mighty the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1977 general elections. But sustaining unity within the newly formed party was a challenge since its inception.
Ever since the challenge of opposition unity has not only stayed put but has become a more challenging task. And in the current contest when the acid test for the opposition camp is coming in the form of Presidential election slated for July 18, the unity efforts have become even more difficult in the face of a formidable ruling party BJP whose leadership led by Prime Minister, Modi is ever willing to use all skills to first ensure the opposition remains in a disarray, through engineering defections and related activities, and then winning the elections using all means fair or foul.
The adage or the headline of the cover-story by the magazine nearly four decades back has not lost its relevance even today when it comes to forging opposition unity. Ever since then the main cause of the opposition falling apart or finding it difficult to come together has been the Prime Ministerial ambitions nurtured even by leaders of the national as well as the smaller regional parties. It was the reason behind the great Janata Party experiment crashing, which saw a repeat in the fall of National Front and United Front Governments at the Centre during the 1990s.
With general elections still two years away; the Prime Ministerial desires have come into play indirectly and the occasion has been provided by the Presidential elections. The fight among the players such as Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Telangana Rastriya Samithi (TRS) is on grabbing the chance to emerge as the pivot of the opposition unity through fielding a joint candidate against the ruling BJP and its allies’ nominee.
It came as a pleasant surprise that the opposition parties were able to zero-in on Sinha’s name after their task was made easy by refusal of Sharad Pawar, Dr Farooq Abdullah and Gopal Gandhi to be the candidate, after holding two meetings. It was away from the past practice of prolonged parleys marred by sniping at each other before reaching to a conclusion.
However, the doubts kept lurking as even after these two meetings the top leaders of all the opposition parties were still to share the platform which is imperative to deliver a strong psychological message to the opponents (read BJP) who are past masters in psychological warfare. While some like the TSR chief and Telengana Chief Minister, K Chandrasekhar Rao, DMK chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister, Stalin had either stayed away or sent their representatives, the others who can play a vital role such as the Biju Janata Dal of Orissa led by enigmatic chief minister, Naveen Patnaik and YSR Congress chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Jagan Mohan Reddy are keeping everyone including the ruling BJP and the opposition camp guessing about their plans.
Under any given circumstance Sinha would be a formidable and meritorious candidate to be the President of India. However, Modi’s Murmu (Oriyan Tribal) card has strong potential to change the context and could prove advantageous to the ruling dispensation in the ultimate outcome. The Oriyan-Tribal background of the ruling combine’s candidate has dashed all hopes of the opposition leaders to woo Orissa Chief Minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supremo, Naveen Patnaik back Sinha and has given further advantage to the BJP and its supporters.
Murmu is the first Tribal woman to be selected as a candidate for the Presidential election. If she wins, she will be the second woman President of India after Pratibha Patil who rose to the top post during the UPA-rule. Her selection, ostensibly, has been guided not only by the arithmetic of the electorate, but also caste, religion and region/state and more importantly, also the futuristic electoral battles.
The last time BJP had chosen Ram Nath Kovind, a Dalit, as its candidate. And now the party strategists have settled for a Tribal nominee. These are clear attempts to broaden the party’s canvass beyond its traditional support base of upper-class Hindus. Clearly, the sights are on 2024 general elections.
It will be interesting to see how the stalwarts in the opposition parties with many stalwarts in their ranks lead the electoral battle of Sinha who himself is an old warhorse. With Patnaik’s backing for Murmu a foregone conclusion, will the opposition camp be able to woo other fence sitters such as YRS Congress and Janata Dal (u) led by Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar?
More importantly, the opposition camp will have to checkmate and ward-off ruling BJP’s attempts at poaching and has the challenge to keep their flocks together.
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