June 08, 2023

Who are Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s best friends in this election season? The opposition leaders, who else. Every time they fight among each other, which is as frequent and certain as day and night, they end up confusing the voter and it works to the advantage of Modi. There are several small battles going on within the bigger war of Modi versus the opposition and these battles are being fought either between two or more regional leaders or between the regional leaders and Rahul Gandhi. These smaller battles are more about protecting their turfs and pandering to their giant-sized egos and when this happens, everything about the corruption in Rafale deal, damage to the federal structure, politics of hatred and divisiveness and destroying the nation’s institutions allegedly being done by the BJP is forgotten.

Take for example the running battle between Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Gandhi. When Rahul went to address an election rally in West Bengal about a fortnight ago, he tore into Banerjee. He called her government worse than the Left government she replaced and said she had done nothing for the state. Mamata shrugged it off by saying that he is just a child. Then yesterday, Mamata accused the Congress of hobnobbing with the RSS and taking their help in two seats in West Bengal. Rahul hit back to say that everyone knows who was once a part of the BJP-led NDA government.

Then up north, Mayawati leaves no opportunity to heap scorn on Congress in general and Rahul in particular. She appealed to the Muslim community not to divide their votes as she said the Congress was not strong enough to fight the BJP. It was her vehement opposition that kept the Congress out of the opposition alliance in the state. If reports are to be believed, she is so incensed with the Congress for putting up candidates in all UP seats that she is thinking of going back on her word of not fielding candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareilly. In Delhi, the Congress’ state unit convinced Rahul not to have any truck with Kejriwal.

Down south, Chandrababu Naidu has been railing against both Jagan Reddy and K Chandrashekhar Rao. Jagan Reddy and KCR are equally dismissive of Naidu and add that both BJP and Congress are the opposite sides of the same coin. In Kerala, angry at Rahul’s decision to seek election from Wayanad, the Left has vowed to defeat him from there. In Gujarat, Alpesh Thakor has resigned from the Congress. All this affords an opportunity for Modi to rubbish the opposition as mahamilavat and further the theory that they will provide a Majboor Sarkar as opposed to his Majboot Sarkar.

Instead of uniting and keeping their focus on a single enemy, the opposition has opened far too many fronts in the war with these small battles. It might result in them retaining hold over their turf and their core constituency but that would not be enough to defeat Modi. Even in case of a hung parliament, their current acrimony would prevent some of them from entering into a post-poll alliance with the others. It will make it easier for the BJP to snare the smaller parties if the need arises. Narendra Modi must be happily thinking that with enemies like these, who needs friends.