19

Jan

WHAT  DO LOK SABHA  POLLS MEAN FOR SOUTH INDIA ?

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Today’s Edition

New Delhi, 19 January 2024

N Sathiya Moorthy

Across the region, there is an untapped hidden concern about the future of the BJP’s  ‘cooperative federalism’ call by Prime Minister Modi, especially in matters of funds-allocation and de-limitation of Lok Sabha seats after a fresh Census, next year.

In other times, the question, ‘What do LS polls mean for South India’ or the East, North-East or any other particular region of the country would have been viewed only in electoral terms and nothing more. In post-Emergency 1977 elections, the ruling Congress was swept away in the rest of the country but the ‘unaffected’ South voted almost entirely in the party’s favour. This was also behind party boss Indira Gandhi choosing Chickmagalur in Karnataka (1978) and Medak in unified Andhra Pradesh (1980) as her constituencies.

Unsure of winning from the one-time family fiefdom of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi contested also from Malappuram in Kerala, from where  he won in 2019. Unsure of a ‘safe constituency’ elsewhere in the country, there are talks of one, two or all three Nehru-Gandhis, namely, Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka Vadera, contesting from the South, possibly party-ruled Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala / Tamil Nadu. Indications are that Sonia, given her age and health may opt out, and Priyanka would have to take a call on contesting.

This is only about the key constituents of the Opposition INDIA combine, the party’s fate and that of its leadership in the upcoming elections and how their electoral fate may be tied to the South. But the larger issues of this election across the Vindhyas is not about how many seats the BJP-NDA could contribute to their possible return, or to the victory margin this time round.

Things are still fluid at least in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where respectively a quasi-ally of the BJP (YSR Congress) and the sworn adversary (DMK) are respectively in power. After the Congress rival regained power from another unsure ally in the TRS/BRS in adjoining Telangana, the BJP is unsure who to pressure to try and form an alliance in AP: Should it be chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy or rival TDP boss and one-time friend, N Chandrababu Naidu. The BJP is also unsure of the approach to and of actor-politician Pawan Kalyan, whose Jana Sena Party (JSP) is continuing to confuse the BJP and the TDP on the question of electoral alliance.

In Dravidian Tamil Nadu, the BJP seems to have given up hopes for playing Cupid between mainline AIADMK Opposition under predecessor chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and his estranged ally O Panneerselvam (OPS), who had been CM thrice, all short stints, over a 15-plus period. There are two other breakaway groups under the late party supremo Jayalalithaa’s live-in confidante Sasikala Natarajan and the latter’s estranged nephew, T T V Dhinakaran. The BJP seems to have given up on the ruling DMK after finally accepting the electoral character of the state, where Hindutva is a burden. Which is also why the EPS-led AIADMK prised itself out of the BJP’s embrace of Elections-2018 and Elections-2021, both of which the alliance lost, the former very badly.

Kerala predicament

That leaves Kerala, where the BJP hopes to open its LS poll account this time at least even if by default after the ‘Sabarimala women entry issue’ did not sell despite heavy marketing. This time the party hopes to be the beneficiary in the head-on contest between ruling CPM-led LDF and the Congress-centric UDF, whose other partners include influential parties of the minority Muslim and Christian communities. However, going by media reports, the party’s choice of constituencies and candidates may not work out to its favour, as in the previous poll. Maybe, it will have a change of heart, with Thiruvananthapuram constituency of Congress veteran Sashi Tharoor being one of those on the BJP’s radar this time, too.

But the real issue in Kerala with its 20 LS seats is not about seats and contests alone. Here, the BJP hopes to expose the inherent contradictions in the INDIA combine. The Congress and the two communist parties that are partners in the national coalition are traditional and mutually-strong adversaries in Kerala. It is also in Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal. While there was some talk of a three-way coalition in West Bengal (which too fell through) no one at any time suggested an LDF-UDF alliance in Kerala.

The BJP hopes to use the INDIA combine’s Kerala predicament to try and expose the rivals across the South, to paint them as a pack of power-hungry politicians whose only aim is to oust the ‘nationalist’ (or, neo-nationalist, if  you want to say so) regime of PM Modi with its ‘corruption-free’ administration that is also ‘people-friendly’. It may not succeed as campaign rhetoric per se, but it would be enough to embarrass the Opposition combine. How far that embarrassment would travel in width and depth would depend entirely on how the other two react to the BJP’s bait.

In the immediate neighbourhood, the Kerala predicament takes a different and more complex tone.  In Tamil Nadu, where like in Kerala, the BJP-NDA has not made much electoral impact even under the Modi tag since the historic 2014, the Congress and the two communist parties contest under the larger DMK banner this time. It used to be the AIADMK on other occasions. Hence, the DMK especially has been careful to rephrase the name of the alliance differently from the rest of the country. The Dravidian rival does not choose a new name but makes sure even otherwise that it is called the AIADMK alliance.(Words 945)

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