The Coalition Dharma

The BJP’s track record of dealing with allies, both at the Centre and at the state level, has so far been tricky

- Abhik Bhattacharya

IT was May 2004. In the power corridors of Delhi, even the whispers were loud—‘Will the Congress be able to form the government? Will it be stable enough to survive for five years?’ The numbers were telling difficult stories and the most common words discussed in middle-class drawing rooms and on television channels were—‘coalition dharma’ and ‘coalition compulsion’.

Debunking exit poll predictions, the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress managed to get 145 seats, but the BJP was not too far behind with 138 seats. However, what made the difference was the numbers of the alliance partners. With the RJD, the DMK and the Left on its side, the Congress-led UPA was all set to form the government but with a caveat: the ‘common minimum programme’.

It has been twenty years since. But history has repeated itself. If not literally, at least symbolically, there are a few uncanny similarities. As in 2004, this time too, the exit polls failed to predict the numbers. Interestingly, the BJP is banking on parties like the JD(U) and the TDP—the same parties that Atal Bihari Vajpayee tried to woo in 2004—to form the government.

Though the NDA has been in power since 2004, its allies never had much of a voice or the capacity to influence policy decisions. And whenever there was any discontent over any policy issue, the partners had no option but to part ways.

The first ally that the BJP lost even before the party came to power with Modi as the PM was Nitish Kumar. This was the beginning of Kumar’s many flip-flops. He opposed Modi’s selection as the Prime Ministerial candidate. However, later, he continued jumping boats until recently when he surprised everyone by re-joining the NDA amid speculation that he could be the potential face of the INDIA bloc.