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| BJP-led NDA faces serious challenge | | Ruling UPA’s non-Cong groups alter political situation | |
B L KAK
NEW DELHI: Political scenario at the national level has just witnessed a change of tremendous significance, with the non-Congress groups in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) poised to put in place a mechanism to make them promote regional non-Congress cooperation.
This follows an equally significant development on the BJP-led NDA front, which seems to have been stirred, if not shaken, as a result of the refusal by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to walk back into the NDA. The TDP has already snapped its ties with NDA. With this, the TDP supremo, N. Chandrababu Naidu, has brought down the curtain on a political liaison he had built at the cost of his ties with the Left and other secular regional players.
Chandrababu Naidu poured cold water on the beleaguered BJP’s scheme of things in the developing situation by making public two things: One, there is no scope in India for religion-based politics. Two, his alliance with the BJP should not continue any more, as the altered scenario just does not permit it. The talk of Third Front coming into being sooner than later has, significantly, drawn attention of even top leaders and strategists belonging to both NDA and UPA.
And the talk is bound to get louder in the coming days, in view of the emergence on the scene of a combination of players who do not want any truck with BJP. This combination of players also oppose Congress for its what is termed as “overbearing ways”. History bears testimony to the fact that Chandrababu Naidu played a prominent role in the formation of two United Front governments at the Centre. His party’s subsequent alliance with the BJP led to a severe jolt to his party’s base among Muslims. The erosion of the Vajpayee factor and the Muslim anger, particularly after the Gujarat riots, turned the TDP’s partnership into a liability.
The unpublished survey, conducted at the behest of Chandrababu Naidu post-Gujarat riots, made it abundantly clear that TDP’s association with the BJP had turned away Muslims. That the TDP and four other regional parties had planed weeks ago to keep themselves away from the much-maligned BJP was known recently. On the first day of Parliament’s monsoon session, first formal signal, in this regard, was sent out.
At a meting held at the residence of an MP belonging to Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), anti-BJP leaders decided to chalk out separate strategy sessions for raising isues in Parliament. These leaders represented TDP, Shiromani Akali Dal, National Conference and AGP. And, significantly, former Haryana Chief Minister, Om Prakash Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) also sent across its message of support to the advocates of regional non-Congress cooperation.
This, more importantly, was followed by the definite, decisive moves aimed at embarrassing both the BJP and the Congress. And taking the situation as it is, the Congress party headed by Sonia Gandhi is confronted with increasing opposition from within the UPA. Competent political observers say that the activity of non-Congress groups in the UPA became more visible after the CPI (M), an important ally of the Congress party, decided under its general secretary, Prakash Karat, to pursue an independent Left Front agenda. Indications are by no means uncertain that most of the regional parties will, as and when the need arises, stand up against the Congress party.
Maratha strongman and Union Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar, too, seems to have provided some anti-Congress stuff. In other words, Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), though supporting economic policies of the Congress party, does not fight shy while playing a specific role in furthering the cooperation between the Left and the regional parties. He was the first to welcome Chandrababu Naidu’s decision to snap relations with the BJP-led NDA.
At present, leaders of regional parties have engaged themselves in the task of putting in place some kind of cooperation mechanism outside the purview of the Congress. An important message from them at the same time: They do not want the Congress party to expand in their respective States.
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