Congress reaches out to regional parties

Non-Congress Opposition parties are actively working on forming a bloc to leverage their combined strength

Together they account for 91 MPs – Trinamool Congress or TMC (37), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or AIADMK (34) and Biju Janata Dal or BJD (20) – and can give the Congress, the second largest party in the Lok Sabha with 44 MPs, a run for its money.

There has been an effort to form a front of non-Congress opposition regional parties so that they can get a better deal from the government. A united front gives them a better bargaining power, which might enable them to bag key positions such as Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha, Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee and Standing Committee on Finance. These posts usually go to the principal Opposition.

For the Congress, which is not sure whether it will even get the leader of opposition status, forging of alliance by non-Congress parties is an additional cause for concern. Though late, it has started efforts to reach out to these regional parties. The National Democratic Alliance has 335 seats in the Lok Sabha: The BJP has 282.

As a leader from a non-Congress opposition party said, “Let’s be clear that the Congress doesn’t have the numbers to be the principal opposition party. So, we regional parties are discussing how we can work together. Once it’s in place, the three chief ministers (Mamata Banerjee, J  Jayalalithaa and Naveen Patnaik) will meet and finalise it.”

The non-Congress opposition front is likely to become operational only in the Budget session.

BJD’s Bhartu Hari Mahtab told Business Standard: “We in the opposition are attempting to form a group, which maintains equidistance from both the BJP and the Congress. Each of us had also gone into the elections as a distinct identity from both these national parties.”

On Congress’s strategy, a party leader said, “We will work with other political parties.”  Leaders like Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s services are being used to talk to other political parties. Pawar has friends in all parties.

 “We are trying to work out some sort of coordination so that the opposition voices are strengthened in the Lok Sabha,” said a Congress source.

Although the BJP is likely to face no problem in Lok Sabha, numbers are stacked against it in the Upper House. In Rajya Sabha, BJP has 42 members, while the Congress has 68. If the party manages to work out a coordinated approach with other parties, including UPA allies, it can put the BJP-led NDA in a spot in the Rajya Sabha.  In the Upper House TMC has 12, AIADMK 10 and BJD has six MPs.

Incidentally, the NDA is also looking to woo the non-Congress regional parties to boost their numbers in the Upper House.        

However, the regional parties are taking a cautious approach. A leader of a regional party said, “The way regional parties had been sidelined completely in the 15th Lok Sabha, we will not let that happen again. There was a tacit understanding between the Congress and the BJP then.”