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BJP steps up efforts to build alliance before 2024 general elections
Many parties are eager to join the NDA and the NCP has just taken the lead, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said in Kangra on Tuesday.
New Delhi On Tuesday, former Karnataka chief minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader BS Yediyurappa said that his party and the former prime minister HD Dewe Gowda-headed Janata Dal (Secular) would fight together against the ruling Congress in Karnataka in the future.
Also on Tuesday, in Lucknow, moves were afoot to induct Om Prakash Rajbhar, an ally of the Samajwadi Party in the 2022 assembly elections, into the Yogi Adityanath cabinet to broaden to social base of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state.
And the Union government (also on Tuesday) announced Y-category security for Santosh Majhi, son of Hindustan Awam Morcha (HAM) leader, Jitam Ram Majhi, who is likely to join the NDA. Santosh Majhi resigned from the Nitish Kumar cabinet before the June 23 opposition meeting in Patna and the ruling grand alliance in Bihar accused his father of spying for the BJP. The HAM’s return to the NDA is expected to boost the coalition’s chances in central parts of Bihar mainly in Jehanabad and Gaya districts.
Also Read: ‘Anything may happen’: Kumaraswamy hinting at BJP-JDS alliance for 2024?
While many of these events have been weeks, perhaps months in the making, there is a discernible acceleration in the BJP’s efforts to build an alliance ahead of the 2024 national elections -- and coming in the wake the weekend’s events that saw a section of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) lawmakers led by Ajit Pawar joining the Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra, it is clear that the party that has emerged the political hegemon over the past decade is working to a script.
Many parties are eager to join the NDA and the NCP has just taken the lead, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said in Kangra on Tuesday.
HT reported on June 10, that the BJP was working on a plan to rebuild the NDA by winning back old allies such as the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Telugu Desam Party, and wooing new ones. Its moves come even as the Opposition is trying to put together a united front, or at least arrive at some kind of understanding to take on the BJP.
In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP is confident of forging an alliance with the N Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP and Pawan Kalyan of the Jana Sena. The TDP walked out of the NDA in March 2018 after the Union government refused to give Andhra Pradesh “special category” status . However, since the TDP’s loss in 2019 state assembly elections, the party seems to have changed its stance regarding the BJP. Naidu has met PM Narendra Modi a few times and also met with BJP chief JP Nadda and home minister Amit Shah on June 4.
Analysts say that the formal announcement is not being made because the BJP does not want to upset its equation with the YSR Congress party, which has 22 Lok Sabha MPs and 9 in Rajya Sabha, ahead of an important Parliament session. The YSRCP has supported every decision of the NDA government at the Centre . The TDP is yet to react to the appointment of former UPA minister, D Purandeshwari, daughter of the late NT Rama Rao, as state BJP president. Naidu, the son-in-law of Rama Rao, founder of TDP, and Purandeshwari are considered bitter political rivals in the state. “He (Naidu) and the Prime Minister share a very close bond,” said a BJP functionary, refusing to comment on the appointment of Purandeshwari.
In Telangana, where the BJP appointed Union tourism minister, G Kishan Reddy, as the state president on Tuesday, the Congress has accused the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) of being the B-team of the BJP. Although the BRS had denied the accusation, analysts said chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has stopped attacking the BJP since the Congress won the Karnataka assembly elections on May 13 and his daughter K Kavitha’s name cropped up in the Delhi excise scam. They point to the meeting last week between his son and state minister K T Rama Rao and home minister Shah could change political equations in the state. “There could be an unwritten understanding between the BRS and the BJP, which is why he is targeting the Congress and trying to split the anti-establishment vote in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh,” political analyst Sriram Karri said.
In Punjab, Sukhbir Singh Badal returned from his London vacation on Monday and is expected to revive talks with the BJP. SAD leaders say that the talks won’t be a walkover and that the party will only return to the NDA on favourable terms. “All this talk about Harsimrat Badal returning to the Modi cabinet is a bit premature,” said a spokesperson for the SAD. A BJP leader familiar with the matter said that SAD’s re-entry is something that has support at “the highest level”.Nadda, Shah and organisation general secretary BL Santhosh are believed to be involved in the talks. The Akali Dal, part of NDA for almost 25 years, left the alliance to protest against the Centre’s farm laws in 2021.
In Bihar, the BJP is looking to build a formidable social alliance to take on the JD(U)-RJD-led grand alliance which also includes the Congress and the Left parties. In addition to the HAM, the BJP has already extended an olive branch to its former ally, the Mukesh Sahni-led Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP) . The Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janashakti Party (LJP-RV) remains part of the NDA. Another prominent Kushwaha leader of Bihar, Upendra Kushwaha, who resigned from the JD(U) and formed a new party, the Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD), is believed to be in touch with the BJP leaders . “NDA will announce formidable partners in coming days,’’ said BJP’s Bihar spokesperson, Santosh Pathak.
Maharashtra and Bihar are both key states from the perspective of the Lok Sabha elections. The first sends 48 members to Parliament and the second, 40. The BJP’s success in breaking the Shiv Sena last year, and the NCP over the weekend may have given it an edge in Maharashtra, analysts said, adding that it could try something similar in Bihar.
After some top leaders including former union minister R C P Singh resigned from JD(U) and joined the BJP earlier this year, the buzz is that more JD(U) leaders could join the BJP soon. “Bihar will face Maharashtra like situation soon,” Kushwaha said on Monday. The JD(U) has rejected the claims even though chief minister Nitish Kumar has started meeting party legislators and MPs individually, primarily, “to gauge their minds”.
In Bengaluru, JD(S)’s Kumaraswamy did not rule out an alliance with the BJP and said it could happen by the end of this year or early next year. “Anything may happen. It will not take too much time.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORChetan ChauhanChetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More
- ABOUT THE AUTHORSunetra Choudhury
Sunetra Choudhury is the National Political Editor of the Hindustan Times. With over two decades of experience in print and television, she has authored Black Warrant (Roli,2019), Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India’s Most Famous (Roli,2017) and Braking News (Hachette, 2010). Sunetra is the recipient of the Red Ink award in journalism in 2016 and Mary Morgan Hewett award in 2018.Read More
