M Karunanidhi, patriarch of Tamil Nadu's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, dropped broad hints on Friday of a willingness to renew his party's political friendship with a Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Karunanidhi said in an interview to Tamil daily Dinamalar that Modi was "hard working" and "a good friend of his". Significantly, he also refused to term the BJP as communal, something he'd done barely three months earlier, at a party rally. The 90-year-old leader said he wouldn't want to speculate about the situation after the Lok Sabha elections, when asked whether the DMK might join a BJP-led coalition government.
In New Delhi, Arun Jaitley, the BJP leader and head of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said the party was winning more and more political allies. He said there were "several states in which electoral tie-ups before the elections or political tie-ups after the elections are both possible and probable".
It is the political season to influence people and win friends, and the BJP is currently winning more than its Congress rival. It is likely the other competition, the 11-party 'third front' might in the days to come lose some of its constituents, such as the Asom Gana Parishad, to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Regional satraps increasingly view the BJP, under Narendra Modi, favourably. As part of their 'Mission 272', the BJP's election strategists have been hard at work to convince potential allies to have electoral tie-ups.
Karunanidhi's comments are being interpreted as an overture to the BJP. Currently, the latter is making the most of a tough situation in the state, after AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa spurned the party and instead entered into an alliance with the Left parties. The party has been keen to stitch alliances with smaller parties like the DMDK, which has a sizable 10 per cent vote share, the PMK and MDMK. Tamil Nadu is considered a key swing state. It, with Puducherry's one seat, sends 40 members to the Lok Sabha. Sources say the BJP's Tamil Nadu chief, L Ganesan, wants the party to have an electoral adjustment with the DMK but the central leadership feels Jayalalithaa is likely to win a majority of seats in Tamil Nadu and they should wait until after the elections before committing to an alliance with either of the two big Dravidian parties.
As a result, the party has kept its relations with both DMK and AIADMK on an even keel. Nrnedra Modi has refrained from attacking the DMK or praising the AIADMK during his public rallies in the southern state.
In Delhi, the BJP leadership is pleased with itself for having struck an alliance with the Lok Janshakti Party in Bihar. It believes to have put in place an effective electoral formula to win most of the 40 seats there. The BJP, after an alliance with the LJP, can expect to get the five per cent Paswan votes which are evenly distributed across Bihar. It has also struck an alliance with Upendra Kushwaha, leader of the backward class community; the addition of Jai Narain Prasad Nishad would make the alliance formidable.
Jaitley said in Delhi that not many thought the party would get allies when the BJP announced Modi as its PM candidate. He said political observers and the media felt the party would be politically isolated. Jaitley said "a strong BJP has the capacity to attract more friends and allies than a weaker BJP".
He said those who'd left the party in Karnataka (B S Yeddyurappa) and Gujarat (Gordhan Zadaphia) had all returned, adding to its strength. It has significant allies in Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. He said a stronger BJP will lead to a stronger NDA. "How to strengthen the NDA requires a lesson from Atalji's book," said Jaitley, referring to how a three-party NDA in 1996 became a 24-party NDA in 1998. "To attract regional allies, one has to accept and respect India's federal and diverse character," he said.
