The INDIA opposition alliance is very upbeat about the upcoming assembly elections in three states — Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand. The upcoming Jammu & Kashmir assembly elections in mid-September are also giving them a strong sense of optimism.
This anticipation, however, has already led to an ugly, protracted power struggle within the alliance over who will secure the plum post of Chief Minister in each state, even before a single seat has been won.
Contrast this internal discord with the manner in which Devendra Fadnavis of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accepted a demotion from Chief Minister to Deputy Chief Minister under his former minister, Eknath Shinde, in order to retain power in Maharashtra.
The INDIA alliance has a real opportunity to unseat the BJP government in Haryana and defeat the breakaway Shiv Sena, NCP, and BJP alliance in Maharashtra. However, instead of focusing on these external challenges, they are preoccupied with infighting, insisting on the formal announcement of the chief ministerial candidate.
The open slugfest between the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Sena, the Congress, and the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP is giving Fadnavis, the BJP’s chief strategist, reason to smile as he senses an opportunity in this internal strife.
A political manoeuvre
It’s no secret that Uddhav Thackeray wants his old job as Chief Minister back and is disappointed that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are not aligning with his view and making a public announcement.
After a rare trip to Delhi, a disappointed Thackeray put pressure on the alliance by suggesting they announce a CM candidate — even if it is someone other than him — stating that he would work to ensure the candidate’s victory. This is a typical Indian political manoeuvre: applying publicly for a position after private efforts have failed.
Sources say Thackeray is hoping Pawar will pressure the Congress on his behalf and publicly endorse him as the CM candidate. This entirely unlikely three-party alliance was originally conjured up by Pawar, the elder statesman of Maharashtra politics, who also persuaded Thackeray to break his 25-year-old alliance with the BJP by appealing to his latent ambition of becoming CM.
Pawar, with his decades-long political career, has always preferred to keep other leaders guessing about his moves and motives. He remains opaque on the question of a CM candidate for Maharashtra. Pawar hopes to prove a point and get his nephew, Ajit Pawar, who broke away from the NCP and betrayed him to become Deputy CM in a BJP-engineered government, to return repentant and suitably chastened.
The trouble is, Ajit Pawar has proved to be a liability for the Shinde faction of the Sena and the BJP, who would like nothing better than to return him to Pawar senior.
Freshly energised cadre
They don’t want to allocate his faction any seats in the contested seat-sharing agreement and openly snubbed him by not even offering Praful Patel a cabinet berth at the centre. After making Baramati an ego issue and getting his wife, Sunetra Pawar, to contest against Supriya Sule, Ajit Pawar is now eating humble pie as his MLAs desert him and rush back to the original NCP.
The Congress and the Uddhav faction don’t want an “Ajit Pawar ghar wapsi” to increase the number of ticket claimants. Meanwhile, the Congress is sensing a huge opportunity in Maharashtra, having rid itself of some deadweight, rootless leaders and with its cadre freshly energised. Former CMs like Prithviraj Chavan are sensing possibilities and a return to the CM’s office — an ambition that would be nullified if Thackeray is announced as the CM candidate.
Haryana is another state where the BJP is looking weak, despite ruthlessly replacing the ineffectual Manohar Lal Khattar as CM with Nayab Singh Saini. The Congress, after ten years, seems poised to make a comeback under the leadership of former CM Bhupendra Hooda. Yet the endemic factionalism, which saw the party lose power for a decade, shows no signs of abating.
If Hooda’s rival Kiran Chowdhary defected to the BJP, Kumari Selja, a serial Hooda-baiter, has now publicly announced her desire to return to state politics. A senior Congress leader remarked, “Given her track record, she will only return to state politics to undermine Hooda. Yet, the Gandhi family is so inordinately fond of her that they will give her yet another chance, and the factional fighting will please the BJP.”
If internal Congress rivalries weren’t enough, another INDIA opposition ally, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), will also contest all the seats in Haryana independently, against both the Congress and the BJP, potentially benefiting the BJP by eating into the Congress vote share.
The AAP is also apparently keen on contesting seats in Jammu & Kashmir. Despite having no known base in the state, the AAP seems determined to challenge the INDIA alliance.
The Jammu & Kashmir elections will be the first since Article 370 was revoked, making it the most politically unpredictable state. These elections will be closely watched as they will indicate how the BJP’s experiment with the state’s new status has fared.
SWAT EXTRA: The BJP has managed “Operation Lotus” in Jharkhand, but Champai Soren, who broke away from the JMM, is demanding that the BJP fund a new party for him. Soren wants to maintain an arm’s-length relationship with the BJP.
