The Indian Opposition : Hang Together Or Hang Separately !

 BY R.K.MISRA

Rulers revel in victories while the observant evaluate echoes.

Thus it was, that though trampled farmers and a bagful of bodies in far of Uttar Pradesh failed to elicit a reaction from  Prime Minister Narendra Modi and  Union Home minister Amit Shah, the two were prompt in their praise after BJP swept the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation elections in Gujarat  . The farmers were crushed on October 3,2021 , the Gandhinagar poll results came two days later and their reaction within hours of it.

A little past with a sprinkling of the present can well help decipher a fair amount of the future and provide an insightful window into the  thought process of those at the helm in the power pyramid.

Gandhinagar, the  state capital has one of the  smallest  municipal corporations in Gujarat. It was the only state capital without an elected local self-government body until a High Court judgement of 2009 forced  the Narendra Modi government in the state to constitute one in 2010. The first civic polls that followed in 2011 were won by the Congress with 18 seats to the BJP’s 15 but it secured power through the backdoor when  three corporators including the mayor defected . In 2016  the two principal rivals  came up equals with 16 each in a house of 32 though the BJP came to power through a congress  defector who was rewarded with the mayor’s post.

The BJP has cause to be happy since it is the first time that it has swept  the Gandhinagar civic body outright . It is part of  Amit Shah’s parliamentary constituency, which was earlier represented by party veteran L.K.Advani .The enlarged municipal corporation now has 44 seats and the BJP has bagged 41  of these in a triangular contest leaving the Congress and Aam Admi Party(AAP) to mop up the remaining two and one seat respectively.  The state BJP leadership sees in it a vindication of the Modi-Shah strategy that dispensed with the entire state cabinet, chief minister  Vijay Rupani included, and a similar  repeat exercise in the selection of the party’s new candidates for the local civic body polls. Said  state BJP president, C.R. Patil ” not repeating candidates has worked for us”.

The devil, however , lies in the detail . Gandhinagar has a total of  281898 voters of which 158532  cast their votes making for the  56.24 per cent voting. The BJP  got 46.49 per cent of it, the Congress  28.02 and AAP 21.77 per cent. Thus the Congress-AAP  combined vote tally  of 49.79 per cent votes surpassed the BJP’s . Divided you fall, remains the clear message for the Opposition from this poll.

The BJP is happy it won a steamroller victory, AAP takes solace it was second in 16 of the 44 seats and the Congress stamps AAP as the ‘B’ team of the BJP which has  divided opposition votes. From the voters perspective, it  twice voted  Congress and ‘their’ candidates fell pray to blandishments betraying the mandate so it punished them. The fact is that the entire opposition here now constitutes just an auto-rickshaw load!

The results of a miniscule municipal corporation would not merit a national political Interpretation were it not for the timing and the reaction of  the duo that rules India and it’s implications for the rest.

As things stand in the BJP, Modi is both the party and  the government. And after this he now firmly believes that the paint job of replacing  entire cabinets including the chief minister with a new set of fresh faces, papers over the inherent inadequacies , mal- governance  and beats anti-incumbency of  an almost entire term. And the BJP has been in power in Gujarat for over a quarter century barring a 17 month break when the Congress piggybacked on rebel Shankersinh Vaghela’s regional outfit.

This poll also confirmed that  the whitewash works even at the grassroot level. So one can expect liberal doses of this ‘beauty treatment’ in the other poll-bound states principally Haryana and Madhya Pradesh though Uttar Pradesh under Adityanath remains impervious to change and is paying the price for it. Six chief minister in five states have been changed in the last over six months with the Congress  also joining the bandwagon in Punjab lately.

Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu ,Puducherry and West Bengal elected new governments in 2021 and seven other states are gearing up for elections this year. These are UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa in the earlier part of the year and Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh in the later part.

One of the immediate implications of the  tiny Gandhinagar civic poll results is the renewed confidence that cosmetics work . This will divide the attention of both the Congress and AAP and handicap the two principal opponents and their leaders  in terms of both logistics, manpower and resources to the benefit of the BJP.

The BJP  is glowing with glee at the results on the ground in Gujarat as well and will mark it out for nationwide replication in the ensuing elections. In Surat, considered the commercial capital of the state, civic elections held in February this year had  thrown up unexpected results. The BJP bagged 93 of the total 120 seats with AAP picking up 27 and the Congress being wiped out.

In what has now become a national pattern, of fomenting splits by means, fair, foul or financial, five AAP corporators quit claiming  ill-treatment and joined the BJP in the presence of minister of state for Home, Harsh Sanghvi on February 5 this year.

 And therein lies both a warning  and an advice for  the Congress as well as the squabbling regional rulers who are vying to pick up footprints in each other’s strongholds.

 Get your combined act together, as if your life depends on it. If you fail to unite, the BJP(read Modi) will string you out to dry separately !.