Will 'Jamli' elections be the next move of BJP?

The just-concluded presidential election has given a clear indication that the opposition parties are determined to bring BJP back in power during the next general elections. They have established that the so-called opposition unity was just a fallacy. Even the Vice-Presidential election is not going to be any different.

It's also time for the oldest political party, the Congress, to wind up as time and again it had failed to flex its muscles and is bereft of strategies and suffers from leadership crisis. It does not appear to be serious to bounce back. One of the reasons could be that the Congressmen have earned enough money needed for three generations as stated by a Karnataka leader on Thursday.

It has no strategies. Occasional tweets, some public meetings by its "top" leaders are not able to create any confidence among the cadre or the voters. It is an unfortunate development that a party which still has a good vote share is suffering from leadership crisis.

Another problem is the non- NDA parties refuse to accept the fact that people are not believing them because they are unable to stand on their own words. They roar that they will finish BJP- led NDA but fail to join hands. Even if some effort is made it gets fizzled out in no time. They too have lost direction and lack seriousness.

Though the victory of the NDA candidate as President was a foregone conclusion, initially it was felt that the opposition parties will succeed in giving a tough fight forcing BJP to introspect its strength and realise that people had not endorsed all their policies. But a golden opportunity has been lost and Opposition failed in their test of intent. In the process they made Yashwant Sinha, the opposition candidate a sacrificial goat.

Even when the non-NDA parties protest in Parliament against GST, they are not united. Everyone shouts, everyone walks to the podium but not unitedly. No one wants to force a discussion and corner the government. Shout and walkout seems to be the strategy. This unfortunately has become a pattern during every session.

They forget they are legislators and their job is to legislate, put the government in dock on issues concerning the people and force the government to take correct decisions. But instead of that what should be done on streets is being done on the floor of the Parliament.

It is this group which wants to defeat BJP at the next hustings and give alternative government. It is really a sad story that is being scripted. The biggest problem with Opposition parties is there are at least five leaders who are eyeing to become PM and want all others to accept them unanimously. They include West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and the Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar.

This being the situation, opposition unity will continue to be a mirage. The chase may continue but there will be no success as there are many inherent contradictions within these parties and their ideologies.

The results have shown that about 104 MLAs had cross-voted and more than a dozen opposition MPs voted in favour of Droupadi Murmu, the President-elect.

As per the data, the Congress-led opposition got 20 votes despite having 45 votes in the Assam Assembly, in Bihar six MLAs cross-voted in favour of the NDA candidate as the strength of the ruling party is 127 but got 133 votes. Similarly, in Chhattisgarh two Congress MLAs did not vote for Yashwant Sinha. Cross voting had also taken place in Goa, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

In Madhya Pradesh, where the allegation of buying MLAs has been levelled by the Congress, around 15 to 16 MLAs of the party cross-voted, which is the major headache for Kamal Nath.In Maharashtra more than a dozen non-NDA MLAs voted for Murmu. She also secured votes in Kerala where there is no BJP MLA to the surprise of the BJP.

The major setback came from Gujarat where 10 MLAs voted in favour of Droupadi Murmu. The state goes to poll this year and the Congress has high stakes in the elections.

The political 'jhumla', a word that is being frequently used against BJP by leaders like Rahul Gandhi and others proved that it is the Opposition that is indulging in all kinds of jhumlas and boxing in the air. But then the big question is do they realise that they have lost their face?

The final tally showed that of the total votes cast, 4701 were valid and 53 were invalid. Droupadi Murmu, the NDA nominee who won the election to become the 15th President of India, bagged 2,824 first preference votes, the value of which stood at 6,76,803. The cut-off mark for victory was 5,28,491. Joint Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha managed 1,877 votes with a value of 3,80,177.

No real groundwork was done by the opposition parties before announcing their candidate. Everyone wanted that he or she should first be projected as the unquestioned leader of the opposition. All of them could not even come on one platform and display their unity and after lot of flip flop when the name of Yashwant Sinha was announced, the kind of enthusiasm that was required was not visible. Some of the parties which had endorsed the name of Yashwant Sinha started back tracking after BJP announced the name of Droupadi Murmu as NDA candidate.

They include the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), former premier HD Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular) and the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena. This gave a clear indication to the NDA that their candidate who was marginally short of some votes to reach the 50 percent mark to win would have a cake walk and finally she polled about 68 per cent of votes.

Murmu certainly had an advantage of being a tribal and that played an important role in getting support of many non-NDA MLAs and MPs and political parties like JMM were caught in uncomfortable situation. But what about parties like Shiv Sena in Maharashtra? Here the tribal population is not more than 10 per cent. What about parties like Congress in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh? They did not have JMM type compulsions yet considerable cross voting took place in these states. That speaks volumes about the leadership both at central and state level.

To that extent Telangana and Andhra Pradesh had shown an exemplary performance. While TRS had opposed Murmu, they ensured that there was no cross voting. In Andhra Pradesh, both the YSRCP and TDP supported Murmu and 100 per cent votes went in favour of NDA candidate.

Karnataka too does not have huge tribal population and there was no JMM like compulsion. The tribal population in this southern state is less than seven percent. Still there was good amount of cross voting.

Even now the opposition parties will not sit together and introspect why such fractures are taking place. The Congress which should have regained its lost ground does not want to democratise and re-invent itself. Other regional parties feel Congress is a liability. They don't want to be seen in the company of Congress party and they too are not willing to unite as each of the leaders have their own agenda and they don't believe in give and take policy. They still do not realise that the past experiments cannot meet with success.

In 1977, three months before the Lok Sabha elections, Janata Party was formed by socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan. The oppression the people witnessed during the 19- month Emergency period brought them together and Congress was voted out of power for the first time. Jayaprakash had insisted that all parties merge into one but that did not happen, and the Janata Party experiment failed due to the contradictions they had in the manifesto and respective ideologies of the party and Congress was back in power.

In 1989, VP Singh who had led a nationwide stir over corruption managed to bring the opposition together again. This led to the birth of the Janata Dal and Congress was defeated but again same story got repeated and over a dozen regional parties were born in different states. In 1996 and 1997 I K Gujral and Deve Gowda formed governments which also collapsed like pack of cards.

Since then, the BJP-led NDA and the Congress party-led UPA (United Progressive Alliance) have been in power and third front remained a dream and will continue to be so.

This disparate lot come can never come together and one need not be surprised if the BJP now thinks of going in for Jamli elections. (Combined elections to Lok Sabha and State Assemblies)