After a tumultuous monsoon session where the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party gave the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) a hard time, stalling Parliament repeatedly, the management of its allies has become a priority of the government.
Whether with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) or the Trinamool Congress (TC) or the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) or even the National Conference (NC), the Congress is trying to keep up with the multiple fronts that have opened up in the UPA.
The DMK, TC and NCP have openly opposed the government move on rationalisation of cooking gas subsidy, saying the move would affect UPA’s core constituency, the common citizen, the hardest. The allies have also criticised the government stringently for allowing an increase in petrol prices.
Earlier this week, the NCP, a coalition partner of the Congress in Maharashtra as well as at the centre, moved a no-confidence motion against the Mukul Sangma-led Congress government in Meghalaya. Although leaders of the NCP knew the outcome would not go in their favour (the NCP numbers only 15 in a 60-member house), it was a way to embarrass and question the government, top NCP leaders said.
Relations with the TC plummeted after Mamata Banerjee’s decision to drop out of the team of chief ministers that visited Bangladesh because she was opposed to the Teesta water accord. After that, a group of Congress MLAs and ex-MLAs met party general secretary Rahul Gandhi to complain about high-handedness of TC ministers and other leaders. The TC has also made public its reservations on the Communal Violence Bill.
The Congress says it is constrained in some responses. “We can’t sacrifice our government at the Centre for the harm the TC is doing to us at the state level,” says another senior Congress leader.
The Samajwadi Party, which lends outside support to the government, has targeted its ‘Kranti Rathyatra’ in Uttar Pradesh at not just the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Lucknow but also to expose corruption in the Congress-led UPA at the Centre. The SP came out in open support of Amar Singh, whom it had expelled from the party, and criticised the way the Congress had engineered his incarceration after using him for its own purposes when it needed him.
The NC and the Congress have decided to part ways in the coming local elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Both parties have told their candidates they are free to criticise ministers and policies of their supposed allies.
The predicament the UPA finds itself in today due to the onslaught of the anti-corruption movement was sparked by the string of DMK ministers in the Union cabinet who embarrassed the government after they were caught in scams. The DMK has a key 18 MPs and relations between the Congress and its southern ally since then have not been smooth.
The DMK’s tainted duo, A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran, who resigned over corruption charges, have not been replaced with any other party faces in the Cabinet. The Congress’ worry is that if its southern ally proposes at any time to give external support, then the UPA will be far more dependent on other parties like Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP and Mayawati’s BSP in Parliament.
A senior Congress leader said, “Regional parties owe their existence to their authority in the state and post-1991, like it or not, federalism has become very strong and the Congress and the UPA government has to respect that.”
