Opinion: Congress Is Sending A Big Message To Opposition Parties

Much has been made of the fact that the Congress chose to support the Trinamool Congress's Yashwant Sinha rather than put up its own candidate for President and that it fielded party veteran Margaret Alva as its vice presidential candidate even though both have been critics in the past.

The former Finance Minister is a Chandra Shekhar acolyte who cut his teeth in the Janata party and later joined the BJP. In his days in the opposition, he was a trenchant critic of the Congress party and the government headed by it.

Margaret Alva, too, has been an in-house critic of the Congress on occasion. Regardless, it was the Congress that proposed her name at Sunday's meeting of opposition leaders called by NCP chief Sharad Pawar.

Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and senior Congress leader, suggested her name. Mr Kharge had consulted both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi before the meeting.

Before Sunday, opposition leaders had informally discussed several names. Sitaram Yechury, the CPI(M) general secretary, had sounded out former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi, who politely declined. At one stage, Mehbooba Mufti's name also came up but she, too, was disinclined to enter the race.

On a Presidential candidate, the Congress made it clear at the outset that it would be happy to go along with any candidate the rest of the opposition agreed upon. The move allowed both Mamata Banerjee and Sharad Pawar to take the lead. Though the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) skipped the meeting called by Mamata Banerjee saying they did not want to share a platform with the Congress, both parties were eventually persuaded to vote for Yashwant Sinha.

The only condition put forward by the Congress and the Left was that the former Finance Minister should resign from the Trinamool Congress before filing his nomination, something that he readily did with the approval of the Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool chief.

Significantly, neither has the Trinamool announced its support for Margaret Alva, nor did its representative attend the meeting in which her name was announced. Sharad Pawar's attempts to contact Mamata Banerjee on the phone proved futile - the explanation put out by the party was that she was busy with some party programme.

Various reasons are being ascribed to the Congress party's decisions on the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.

To my mind, three factors clinched its strategy.

One, in both cases the numbers weighed heavily in favor of the NDA candidate. No matter who the opposition put up, the fight would be symbolic. Two, despite being the largest party in the opposition, the Congress neither has the numbers nor the political heft to dictate terms. The leadership thought it prudent to play a supporting role and allow others to take the lead. Third, the Congress leadership also appears to be hinting that for the sake of opposition unity, it will not insist on pole position every time.

There are, however, those who believe that the Congress leadership's decision to back Yashwant Sinha and Alva is a sign of their diminishing clout, even among opposition parties. There is absolutely no denying the fact that ground has slipped from under the Congress's feet and it is now the weakest version of a once-mighty party that ruled the Centre and large swathes of the country. Even when the BJP was in power earlier under Atal Behari Vajpayee (1999 to 2004), it was the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi that was the fulcrum of opposition parties.

Sonia Gandhi took the lead in setting up the UPA and bringing together a large number of parties opposed to the BJP. In doing so, she also showed a remarkable willingness to work with Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and MK Karunanidhi.

In 1999, Sharad Pawar, Purno Sangma and Tariq Anwar had left the Congress and formed the NCP, yet four years later, Sonia Gandhi drove to the NCP chief's house to hammer out an agreement to work together. In 1997 the Congress withdrew support to the IK Gujral government after he refused to drop DMK ministers following a Jain commission report that accused the Tamil Nadu party of colluding with the LTTE. But a few years later, she teamed up with the DMK to form the UPA. In fact, the two parties continue to be allies and the Congress is a part of the DMK-led alliance and government in Tamil Nadu.

Opposition parties have so far failed to come together and coalesce into a viable force mainly because of their inability to set aside differences and rein in their ambitions. "The opposition parties must decide on what is more important to them, defeating the present dispensation or jostling amongst themselves," says a senior leader involved in the backroom efforts to bring the opposition together.

(The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.