Too early to predict realignments for ’14
The way the realignment of political parties occurred in the election for Rajya Sabha seats from Tamil Nadu on Thursday has led to comments that we may be witnessing the new line-up of forces for the next Lok Sabha poll. This may be a hasty inference based on slim evidence.
For now the only thing that can be said is that the polls in Tamil Nadu served to underline the current fluidity of Indian politics that may be traceable to schisms of a local nature, and that grand alignments have not yet been indicated.
The voting for seats for the Upper House of Parliament in Tamil Nadu not only showed the coming together of the DMK and Congress, parties that had parted only months ago on the Sri Lanka Tamil issue, the election also occasioned the endorsement for the Rajya Sabha of CPI leader D. Raja by the AIADMK, which evidently holds the whip hand in state politics. It wasn’t so long ago that the Left parties were more at home with the DMK than the AIADMK, which was meant to have a soft spot for the BJP.
However, the question does arise: what would the Left parties do in Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha election if they manage to do even an indirect deal with the Congress in West Bengal to keep Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress on the defensive?
It may, therefore, be prudent to hold back judgment until the contours of overall national-level political adjustments become clearer. In the meantime, it is true, however, that the teaming up of the Congress and the DMK (which permitted K. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi to get back to the Rajya Sabha by the skin of her teeth) should provide the UPA-2 regime room for parliamentary manoeuvre, especially in dealing with parties like the BJP and the Trinamul Congress.
The political situation in another important state — Bihar — is also yet to stabilise itself after Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) broke its links with the BJP. At the level of atmospherics, the Congress has made the JD(U) feel comfortable. This should, for now, blunt that party’s NDA-period hostility against the Manmohan Singh government in Parliament, even if Congress and JD(U) are unable to reach accord at the present stage.
Uttar Pradesh is another state to watch. With some upper caste sections that had backed Ms Mayawati’s BSP in the last Assembly and Parliament election now indicating a preference for the BJP, it is conceivable that the BSP and Congress could move closer to one another despite past skirmishes (which, in Uttar Pradesh, is the story of the mutual ties as between all parties). All one can say for now is that all the secrets have not yet been unlocked.
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