What lies beyond the hug, wink and no-trust motion
In keeping with predictions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi easily defeated the first opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion that he faced in his four-year tenure on the floor of the Lok Sabha, the lower House Parliament. Both the BJP and the main opposition Congress have some major takeaways from the exercise which gave an insight to key components of their strategy for the coming parliamentary elections.
The BJP's strategy during the debate on the no-confidence motion could be a good opportunity to deflate the perception of a pan-Indian united opposition front of the Congress and key regional parties. The BJP not only sought to drive a wedge between the main opposition party Congress and other key regional parties which are trying to join hands against Modi and woo some of these parties. Both the components of this strategy of the BJP were abundantly available in Modi's hour-long reply to the debate on the motion.
A thrust area of Modi's speech was to try and wean away other opposition parties from the Congress. That was why one saw Modi digging into history to caution the non-Congress opposition against a coalition with the Congress. He recalled how the Congress had betrayed its different allies at different times by first supporting them from outside to form governments in 1979, 1991 and 1997 and then withdrawing the support leading to premature fall of federal governments and triggering political instability in the country. Modi's political message was that Congress cannot be trusted as a reliable coalition partner. It is a fact that some regional parties in the opposition aiming at an anti-BJP coalition are the main political rivals of Congress, like the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) ruling Telangana state in the South and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) which is in power in Odisha in the East. The TRS does not share Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's enthusiasm for including the Congress in a pan-India anti-BJP front. Interestingly, lawmakers of both the TRS and the BJD stayed away from the no-trust motion debate, thereby making it possible for Modi to defeat the motion with a much bigger margin as their absence brought down the threshold mark in the Lok Sabha.
For much the same reason, Modi kept the main focus of his speech on the Congress and recalled how political stalwarts had to "suffer" for challenging the Jawaharlal Nehru-Indira Gandhi dynasty. The names the Prime Minister mentioned in this context are significant—Subhash Chandra Bose, Vallabbhai Patel, Morarji Desai, JP Narayan, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, Nationalist Congress Party Sharad Pawar (who quit Congress in the 90s questioning Sonia Gandhi's credential to become the PM because of her foreign origin) and Pranab Mukherjee who missed out being India's Prime Minister. Modi also contrasted his own humble background and backward caste to those of Rahul's rich dynasty.
In another crucial component of the strategy to woo the regional parties, which could be the Congress' allies in the coming elections, Modi also pointed out that it was under the previous BJP dispensation headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee that three small states—Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand—were smoothly created by dividing geographically some of India's biggest states Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and juxtaposed it against the creation of Telangana state out of Andhra Pradesh under a Congress-led federal government resulting in heartburns which are yet to be resolved. Modi also commended TRS chief and Telangana K Chandrasekhar Rao's development work which prompted political analysts to view the TRS' boycott of the no-trust motion as a boost to the BJP.
Whether or not the BJP's strategy succeeds in dividing the opposition remains to be seen. However, behind the caution to the regional parties about the Congress lies the lurking fear in the saffron party that a combined opposition in the elections could dash its hopes of returning to power for the second time in succession. But then power politics is a slippery path. That is why one sees the Janata Dal (Secular) party led by HD Deve Gowda (who was present during the debate on Friday) joining hands with the Congress recently to form government in Karnataka state despite the fact the Congress had pulled the rug from under Deve Gowda when he was the Prime Minister in 1996–97. That is why one saw Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav (who was also present in the Lok Sabha on Friday) supporting the no-confidence motion even though he was a Defence Minister in Deve Gowda government brought down by the Congress.
True, there was disappointment for the BJP as its longest-standing but now estranged ally Shiv Sena stayed away from voting against the no-confidence motion. But the saffron party took heart from the direct opposition to the motion from All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADM), another key regional party which rules the southern state of Tamil Nadu and is a potentially ally in the TRS.
The Congress too finished the no-confidence motion exercise with some positive takeaways: Rahul Gandhi's combative speech attacked the government and aimed to hurt the BJP's main plank of anti-corruption by alleging graft in the deal with France to buy Rafael fighter planes. Rahul brought Modi into the firing line for the major part of his speech and then followed it up with the dramatic bearhug for the Prime Minister and wink at Congress lawmaker-colleagues inside the House. But one came away with the impression that the wink took some lustre off his speech and his hug, given the seriousness of the occasion.
Pallab Bhattacharya is a special correspondent at The Daily Star.
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