The last few weeks were full of interesting events in the political arena. It always seems that the opposition now has an upper hand on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP but eventually it turns out that Modi is the final winner. It has been very rare in cases like the farm laws then and the wrestler’s agitation now when Modi had to retract his steps. Even if Modi retracts like in the chess board, the impact of that on BJP has been electorally negligible. The important point to note is that in both cases the opposition has shot from the shoulders of other people and have not done it directly but Modi gives a blow directly to the opposition and seldom shoots from anyone else’s shoulder which has proved electorally fatal for the opposition especially for the only other national party albeit on paper today, the Indian National Congress. Even if the opposition was able to make a rare dent in the armor of Modi, his next moves have left the clueless opposition fall heavily on the ground losing the bout.
As we all know, some miscreants entered our new parliament and did a copycat act mimicking some great freedom fighters who had a very good and noble reason which their agenda driven attempt can never match. If the opposition had a strong strategy and skill, they would have not repeated the same mistake asking every time for Amit Shah or Narendra Modi to speak in parliament and would have come up with a solid plan of attack to corner Modi as there was a security lapse which was the main issue. As always, the opposition had a lackluster idea and everyone started creating ruckus in parliament and had a lot of their rank and file suspended. What they didn’t expect was that a historic record of suspension to the extent of 146 people would be done. Logically, the next smart move by them would have been to go to the public with a serious face, sit outside parliament protesting against the so called injustice meted to them. On the contrary what they do? They have a gala time outside with one TMC leader mimicking the Hon’ble Vice President of India and another Congress leader filming it. The public who was already irritated with opposition parties consistently hindering the business of the house(s) in multiple sessions now but could have sympathized with them got more angered witnessing their casual and irresponsible behavior outside of parliament. The opposition plan totally flopped as no one seemed to take them seriously as the public at large except their staunch supporters realized that they were not serious about the nation nor them as their voters and were just concentrating on their agenda. In the midst of all this ruckus, BJP got time to investigate the incident. Amit Shah will eventually share the findings of the security breach and I somehow feel it will be big blow to the dot dot alliance again. Another important catch, not surprisingly, missed by a team totally out of form.
In the meanwhile, Modi’s smarter army springs to action and quickly improvises while the opposition soldiers were jumping on the field and outside. A theory that some have is that there is a bigger plan behind the mass suspension. BJP knew the risk of sympathy factor for opposition but still they let the suspensions happen. Modi’s move through this is to unite the I.N.D.I alliance very strongly so that they fight the 2024 elections as one single unit instead of multiple parties splitting votes and all the votes of those voters who don’t like a party in the dot dot alliance will move in bulk to the only opposition which is BJP. This way BJP tends to gain more.
Even if the earlier plan doesn’t work and the opposition disintegrates before 2024 elections which is just a few months away now and everyone does their own thing although they will not call off the alliance formally, Modi will adopt plan B which is to keep attacking Congress’s ego and have them cut the votes of the regional parties as much as possible wherever its not a direct one to one contest for BJP. It is very clear that Congress will have existential crisis as a national party if they don’t get enough seats in states like TN, WB, Bihar etc. The stronger regional parties are not in a mood to give them double digit number of seats and the Hindi heartland has already abandoned them. BJP will take full advantage of the abusive remarks of DMK about Sanatana Dharma and Hindi speaking states as they know the other parties of their alliance will not openly condemn for the sake of the alliance. Nitish kumar and RJD are visibly unhappy with DMK and with Mallikarjun Kharge’s name proposed as PM candidate albeit Congress has been silent on that. Public is bound to get terribly confused with so many contradictions and the big question that will run in their minds is that how the parties will run the country together if they can’t simply work amicably.
Either way it’s Modi’s check and mate to the I.N.D.I alliance. No prizes for guessing the winner. The only thing to wait and watch is to how much more seats will BJP manage to gain beyond 300 although I am confident they will easily break their highest so far. 2024 is set to start with a spiritual and political celebration in its first quarter itself. Jai Shri Ram!
Ananth Mahadevan is a political commentator based in Bengaluru.
Subscribe to our channels on Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.