The collapse of two long-standing political alliances in Maharashtra points to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s growing confidence in its ability to break fresh ground and to the Congress’s increasing vulnerability to the unresolved debate within the party on whether it should abandon the path of coalition or not.
Both combinations broke ostensibly because of differences on seat-sharing formulas, and the failure to agree on which partner would lead the alliance in the upcoming State elections.
This came against the backdrop of the BJP winning a majority on its own in the general elections. The BJP, however, chose to rule at the head of the National Democratic Alliance to honour a pre-poll arrangement. The Congress, on the other hand, was reduced to an all-time low, winning just 44 seats after a decade in power at the head of the United Progressive Alliance.
Yet, both parties have lost just two partners each since the Lok Sabha polls.
In the BJP’s case, its break with the Haryana Janhit Congress, followed by its split with the Shiv Sena, was caused largely — if not entirely — as the BJP’s leadership felt that it was time to test its ability and Prime Minister’s popularity. It will also be a test to capture fresh political space.
For the Congress, a party that has been even more uncomfortable with being in a coalition than the BJP, the reasons for its break with its allies – the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir and the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra — are different. The Congress’s capacity to negotiate with its partners has not just diminished; it is also at a political crossroads.
In 2003, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, the Congress decided to put a premium on the politics of coalitions. Party president Sonia Gandhi issued a public appeal at that time to secular formations to come together to evolve a strategy to “combat communalism and religious fundamentalism and ensure the defeat of the BJP and its allies.”
Ms. Gandhi’s formula worked in two successive general elections in 2004 and 2009, but the Congress failed to leverage its power in that decade to regain areas from where it had all but vanished. Simultaneously, as difficult partners in government held the UPA government to ransom on issues ranging from foreign affairs to economic policy, the murmurs in the party grew louder — to rebuild the party from scratch.
