With the elections looming up ahead, political parties across India are busy forging alliances with one another. And the Congress led UPA government seems to have landed in troubled waters in the states of Maharashtra, Bihar and Telangana, finding it really hard to form alliances with the local parties. The Bharata Janata Party headed by Narendra Modi on the other hand, have been quite successful till now in forming alliances with several parties with the sole aim of regaining the Center’s power after nearly a decade of waiting by the sidelines.
The party has coaxed the Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP party in Bihar into forming an alliance. While one may think that this move by the BJP was undertaken to attract Dalit voters, many believe that the BJP formed the alliance in a bid to break the Congress-RJD tie up which is already faltering due to seat-sharing issues.
The BJP has promised the LJP three vital seats in Bihar at the cost of dissensions within its own ranks. The party has also approached the MNS party led by Raj Thackeray in a bid to prevent the latter from fetching candidates to raise their voice against the party’s alliance with Shiv Sena.
The MNS is known for its hate campaigns on North Indians. Therefore, the BJP has to handle MNS very carefully in states like UP and Bihar where a partnership with the latter would cost the party plenty of votes.
However, if the BJP successfully convinces the MNS to stay away from the elections, it could spell a lot of trouble for the already weakened Congress-NCP partnership in a state where the AAP party led by Arvind Kejriwal can turn out to be another major spoiler.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s (TRS) decision to not merge with the Congress party while indicating about possible alliances with other parties has also come as a blow to the former who made some serious electoral calculations based on the 17 Lok Sabha seats introduced in the new state.
The BJP and Congress would definitely benefit by forming alliances with regional parties that wield more power in their respective regions nowadays. With the announcement of the poll dates by the Electoral Commission, the two parties would start hunting for alliances with renewed fervor.
However, both parties need to realize that instead of being content with content with age-old political measures, regional parties today have started asking (or rather demanding) for fulfilment of aspirations and developments. It is this demand that alliances would need to focus on and work towards in the electoral campaigns this year.
