E-Paper
The penny drops
The Congress may have jumped the gun in announcing victory in the current elections, but its declaration that it will lead any putative non-NDA government couldn?t have come sooner.
The Congress may have jumped the gun in announcing victory in the current elections, but its declaration that it will lead any putative non-NDA government couldn’t have come sooner. Regional leaders, wearing their ambition on their sleeves, were already planning to hijack the party with a little help from their friends in the Left.
The Congress has clearly learnt the lesson of the 1996 election outcome. Despite being the second-largest grouping in Parliament, it had supported the formation of a Third Front government, with H.D. Deve Gowda, a Janata Dal leader mostly unknown outside Karnataka, as prime minister. When this government collapsed after ten months, the Third Front came up with an even more fantastical option: I.K. Gujral, who never won a Lok Sabha seat, as PM.
This government, too, came apart in six months leading to the 1998 elections when the BJP got 182 seats and the Congress 141. The Third Front did not give up. It dangled the prospect of government before the Congress and brought down Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s first NDA government. Unfortunately, the numbers did not add up and the country had to go through another mid-term poll in September 1999 that gave the NDA a sufficient majority to provide a stable government for five years.
It is no secret that the Congress has been somewhat of a late Latif in understanding the compulsions of coalition politics. In 1990, Rajiv Gandhi agreed to support Chandrashekhar’s government for a couple of months as the former was not prepared to stake a claim with just 197 MPs. After the electoral victories in the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi assembly elections in 1998, the Congress declared after its Pachmarhi meeting that it would not have any electoral alliance with regional or smaller parties. The party has adjusted its strategy and its fortunes appear to be looking up. The irony is that even while propping up those improbable governments, the Congress had to bear the opprobrium of bringing them down.
The Congress has now realised that as the largest of the so-called secular parties, it has the special responsibility — if not mandate — of steering the course of the yet-to-be-formed non-NDA grouping. But first it has to clear the decks and make it clear as to who would be the captain of the ship.
