Raut is correct in asserting that an opposition alliance without Congress is impossible.

With the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections 2022 around the corner and Sanjay Raut, Shiv Sena member of Parliament, put it best when he remarked that an opposition alliance without the Congress was impossible. This would undoubtedly be perceived as an insult to Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who branded the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the Congress to be a non-entity just a few days earlier in Mumbai.

 

She also made some scathing remarks against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, without identifying him, saying that he spent much of his time abroad. She met with leaders of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to discuss the possibilities of forming a non-Congress coalition to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

 

The stunning success she had in the West Bengal assembly elections, as well as her ability to arrange a major defection from the Congress legislature party in Meghalaya, encouraged her to think along such lines. She should have realized that her party would not be able to repeat its success in her home state of Tripura in the Municipal Elections.

 

The fact that Bengalis make up a sizable portion of Tripura's population should have aided her in turning the tables on the BJP. She couldn't organize defections as she could in Shillong in faraway Panaji. To put it another way, she has a long way to go before she can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

 

Because of the divide in anti-Congress votes in previous elections, Congress was able to win consecutive elections. Even when the BJP earned a large majority in the Lok Sabha in 2019, barely one-third of the population backed them. This suggests that the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) votes made up nearly two-thirds of the total votes cast. The BJP's sole chance in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls early next year, is that votes would be split between the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party, and the Congress.

 

Except in states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh, where the votes are normally split between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, what is true in UP is generally true across the country. To put it another way, any strategy to beat the BJP must include opposition unity.

 

Prashant Kishor, who has succeeded in projecting himself as a great election strategist, is said to be guiding the TMC leader. He's done a good job of branding himself, and his services come at a cost. Nobody knows for whom he works because he has worked for practically every political party at some point.

 

Rahul Gandhi has a point against Banerjee in that he is only engaged in spurts. He has not backed down from his opposition to the Modi government so far. He's also been pretty outspoken. A leader, on the other hand, must continually highlight issues of concern to the people and fight for them until they are resolved to be effective. To present an alternative to the BJP, Gandhi should keep this in mind and expand the UPA to include more parties.

 

Image Courtesy: Twitter @rautsanjay61