Will too many cooks spoil the opposition unity broth? There are at least three serious claimants to be the face of the Opposition before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. They are NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and ex-Congress chief Rahul Gandhi. The three have come out openly to unite the Opposition indicating that whoever gets more seats could be the prime ministerial candidate.
While Banerjee continues with her “Khela Hobe” slogan at the national level, she is indeed reckoning for a larger Opposition gambit. Other leaders are equally interested in leading the opposition block. Pawar is the most experienced among the opposition leaders, but age and health are not on his side. Pawar had several chances to become the prime minister in his long political career but missed them by a whisker.
Trinamool MPs want Mamata to emerge as the undisputed leader of the Opposition. Congress, of course, thinks that it is the party’s birthright to rule. Rahul is engaging with the opposition leaders for the first time even though it is restricted to devising a parliamentary strategy. Interestingly, all three leaders are preparing their strategies separately.
The irony is that while all three talk about unity, finding an acceptable candidate will not be easy with the egoistic regional satraps and the Congress party staking claim. Mamata Banerjee had sidestepped this issue by saying that it would be decided later. Also, it is doubtful whether opposition parties will manage to remain together till 2024. Polls have different political compulsions for various parties.
They had also exhibited their strength by inviting opposition leaders for meals – Sharad Pawar for tea, Mamata Banerjee for lunch and Rahul Gandhi for breakfast. Most invitees attended all three, but Congress kept out of Pawar’s tea and Trinamool Congress out of Rahul’s breakfast meeting. This itself shows the reservation of these parties on a common Opposition candidate.
Some say that it is too early to think of the 2024 polls. Mamata insists that to defeat BJP, opposition parties would require to prepare much in advance. Mamata also does not want to keep Congress away from the conglomeration of opposition parties. That is why she called on Sonia and Rahul Gandhi at 10 Janpath, during her recent visit. Mamata has momentum with her now. She knows her own shortcomings.
Is she playing to be the Queen or the Kingmaker? Rahul’s own position in the party is tenuous. The youngest among the three, he has followed in their footsteps. He is presently actively engaging with opposition leaders inside Parliament and outside, something he is doing for the first time in his political career.
He rarely participated in joint meetings of opposition leaders during parliament sessions. Such arrangements were generally attended by the then Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and his deputy Anand Sharma. Even in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament, the parties chalked out their own strategies to take on the government. Almost when the session was about to end, Rahul Gandhi woke up to chalk out a joint plan against the BJP in Parliament.
At the breakfast meeting this week, attended by MPs from 14 opposition parties, Rahul said, “The most critical thing in my view is that we unite (against) this force. The more this voice unites, the more powerful it will become, the more difficult it’ll become for BJP-RSS to suppress it. Within the foundations of unity, we can have a few discussions and arguments, but I think it is important for us to come up with the principles of the foundations of our unity.”
A new entrant in preparing for the unity move is the political strategist used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mamata Banerjee and Sharad Pawar and some regional satraps. Prashant Kishore carefully chooses winning sides – Jaganmohan Reddy, Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal and DMK. This is precisely the astuteness that has kept him afloat. He has been meeting opposition leaders, preparing the ground for a unity move.
He is also expected to join the Congress as a paratrooper. A democracy needs a strong opposition. A divided opposition only helps the ruling party. It is a lame excuse to claim that the Opposition does not have the strength.
Did not half a dozen leaders like Madhu Dandavate, K P Unnikrishnan, S Jaipal Reddy, Inderjit Gupta and Somnath Chatterjee manage to extract a joint parliamentary probe for the Bofors gun deal? At that time, the Rajiv Gandhi government had 420 members. What the opposition needs is a strategy, a new narrative and solid communication skills.