New Delhi: The BJP is slowly reconciled to live without its major allies now that its oldest friend, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has quit the NDA alliance.
The BJP and the SAD have been partners even in the Jan Sangh days. With a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, the BJP’s attitude has changed to ‘go if you want to leave.” That is why there are no efforts to mollify the miffed allies as it was done during the Vajpayee era. There was a time in the eighties when it was difficult for the BJP to get allies but today Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a strong position.
The BJP had five major allies till two years ago. They were the Telugu Desam, Shiv Sena, Akali Dal and JD (U) and the PDP. With the Bihar elections round the corner, the party is left with only the JD (U) as its major ally. The others are small parties. Of these, Telugu Desam was the first to leave in 2018 March. Soon another old ally Shiv Sena parted company in October 2019 on the issue of chief ministership in Maharashtra after the Assembly polls. The Sena formed the government under Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party. The SAD has left now on the issue of the controversial farm bills. The only ally the BJP dumped was the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir. In any case, the BJP-PDP alliance was what the late PDP chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had said, “an alliance of the North Pole and the South Pole.”
The partners had been unhappy with the BJP for a long claiming that they were not consulted or even informed about major issues. ‘Where is NDA,” asks SAD chief Sukhbir Badal. The relationship under Modi has changed compared to Vajpayee’s time when one of the partners was the convenor of the NDA while Vajpayee or later Advani were the chairman of the alliance. There were NDA meetings on important issues.
Though Modi has included the representatives of the allies despite the BJP having a majority in both 2014 and 2019 there is no formal NDA structure. However, the BJP needed them in Rajya Sabha for pushing the bills where it was in a minority. The Modi-led BJP has learned the art of dividing the opposition and pushing through even some controversial bills like the recent two farm bills and earlier the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Also, the Punjab elections are in 2022 and the next Lok Sabha polls are only in 2024. Who knows what will happen by then? However, according to insiders, the BJP wants to improve its performance by going solo in the coming polls.
The main grouse of the allies is that the BJP, which was the junior partner in Maharashtra or Punjab, has expanded its base in the past six years and has overtaken the allies and also has become the richest party.
Notwithstanding the concerns of its allies, the BJP is aggressively pursuing its objective of coming to power in states where it is not in the government. The only aim for the party is to consolidate Hindu voters even further by eating into the votes of its partners. It has a major presence in most big states and is now eyeing the south and the northeast for expansion. It has replaced the Left in Tripura and edged Congress out in West Bengal and Odisha as the main challenger to the ruling party.
In the 17th Lok Sabha, the NDA has 335 members of which the BJP alone has 303 members. It does not need allies in 334 seats and is dependent on allies in 212 seats. When the BJP came to power in 2014, it had only 23 Rajya Sabha seats but today, its tally is 87. So far, the party has managed to push even controversial bills like the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir and CAA by dividing the opposition. The three farm bills were also passed similarly.
The Modi regime wants to have ties in which the BJP stands to gain. This has mostly worked in the past six years. The BJP has overtaken the Sena in Maharashtra and in other states also it has improved its electoral chances.
Is it said that in politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies. The BJP is also banking on the old allies coming back to its fold and new allies might join the alliance.
If one looks at the coalition politics, which was practiced by both the main parties – the Congress and the BJP- the Congress, led UPA is also not in good shape.
Kalyani Shankar is a senior journalist and political analyst based in New Delhi