EVEN as the political atmosphere is warming up for the election year ahead, new equations among parties are seen emerging on the horizon. Those who played a key role in the Opposition strategy to pull down Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi in 2019 appear to have gone under and are possibly looking at new alignments. For example, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, the last election’s roaring tiger in the Opposition camp, has lost his relevance suddenly for reasons not very difficult to decipher. He is now reported to be making attempts to realign himself and his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Mr. Narendra Modi. Several other political outfits of varying influences and sizes also are trying to return to the NDA fold, as reports have us believe.

 

As these reports emerge and vanish in the atmosphere, political observers are expecting a major internal shake-up in the BJP as well as the Central Government, possibly ahead of the electoral challenges of the coming year at the State and the Central levels. Of course, with master strategists like Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Amit Shah leading the NDA, it is absolutely unfathomable how they will react to emerging situation. Yet, there is no denying the fact that reports of a major shake-up are thick in the air. But if the NDA camp is busy in a serious strategic rethink for the election season, the Opposition camp is still trying to find ways and means to forge what can be called a grand front of its constituent parties. These attempts may not succeed as the road-blocks to that goal are very serious though mostly stemming from narrow considerations of various Opposition leaders.

 

The biggest hurdle in that journey is the seat-sharing formula among the constituent parties in the Opposition camp. For, according to regional chieftains like Ms. Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress or Mr. Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party and Mr. K. Chandrasekhara Rao of Bharat Rashtra Samithi or Mr. M.K. Stalin of the Dravida Munetra Kazhagham, they will not sacrifice their seats in their respective regions of influence for the benefit of the Congress party. They expect the Congress party to form its national list leaving aside these regional segments to respective parties. If this approach is approved, the Congress party will be left with no scope to choose its own candidates nationally. Its influence, thus, will get restricted only to those States under its rule. In that case, the number of seats the Congress party will contest at will be far lesser than its actual influence as the country’s single largest Opposition party.

 

With the Opposition camp having been stuck at this point ahead of the proposed June 23 meeting at Patna, there are obviously serious issues the collective leadership must handle. Correspondingly, the NDA camp is in a happy position since there are no such issues that outweigh common good. Yet, in the NDA, persons like former Prime Minister Mr. H.D. Dewe Gowda, Bahujan Samaj Party leader Ms. Mayawati, a faction of Akali Dal and many others are cosying up with the Prime Minister, making way for newer alignments in the election year. It is obvious that the political picture of the country during this year of intense contests would be altogether different, and far beyond the normal imagination. Though the Opposition camp is making appropriate noises to create an impression of a threat to Mr. Narendra Modi’s primacy, the whole nation is sure that this time, too, the Prime Minister is going to have an easy run at the hustings, no matter the margin with which he will win. The reason is simple: The Prime Minister knows how to manage political equations better than anybody in the Opposition camp.