16TH GENERAL ELECTIONS TO INDIAN PARLIAMENT – WHAT THE REALITIES PORTEND?

With the general elections due in less than a year mainstream political parties are busy engaged in cobbling together alliances and fronts to come face to face with for the formation of the next govt at Centre. Political parties, Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party are on the look out for allies forgetting or trying to forget the enmities at least till the General Elections are over. UPA (United Progressive Alliance) and NDA (National Defence Alliance) the two main contending alliances are the main contending alliances, this time too. On the periphery sit Left Front consisting of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (CPI), Forward Block and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) which constitute the Left Front are not nursing any ambitions of capturing power at the Centre as these are still not  a  force to reckon with in the great race for power. Still they do keep dreams of forming a third front with the aim of hurting UPA and NDA at the hustings if possible cobble together a force bringing all splinter parties under one umbrella and emerge a potential force to armtwist the coming UPA govt or NDA govt - each finds possibilities of emerging winners when the chips are down.

While Indian National Congress has not so far made its stand clear as to who is set to be its Prime Ministerial candidate  Dr.ManMohan Singh, the incumbent PM or Rahul Gandhi, Vice President, Indian National Congress or another one who might be sitting in the wings - to be more apt, a dark horse, Bharatiya Janata Party, the largest party in the NDA alliance has almost made  its position clear by holding aloft its trump card Narendra Modi as the future Prime Minister in case NDA returns to power. Easier said than done.

NDA’s main constituent Janata Dal (United) has made its position amply clear that there is no question of recognizing Narendra Modi as the next Prime Minister of India pointing towards the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 in which approximately three thousand citizens of a minority community were brutally slaughtered allegedly at the instance of Narendra Modi who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat then. Furthermore, Nitish Kumar himself finds himself a suitable candidate to be the next PM. A piquant situation has developed in NDA with the prospect of JD(U) walking out of National Defence Alliance. Though Bharatiya Janata Party holds out a brave face, a confident face., the undercurrents developing in the party cannot be ignored. 

Day before yesterday Lal Kishan Advani while addressing a large gathering in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh minced no words in praising the incumbent Chief Minister Shivaraj Singh Chauhan for converting the latter’s State into a ‘heaven on earth’ albeit lauding Narendra Modi for the administrative skills the latter displayed in changing the face of Gujarat for the better.

Advani, who is the architect of Bharatiya Janata Party which no one in his party would contest had fondled a dream of entering the ‘driving seat’ of an NDA govt. Even in his 80’s, he still secretly fondles that dream and his ‘grudge’ against Modi is not a secret. In the event of Advani emerging the front runner for Prime Ministership – mind you all hypothetical – Janata Dal (United) won’t have much of a problem.

But Modi’s kingsize ambition of becoming the Prime Minister has many takers in Bharatiya Janata Party’s National leadership.

They prefer selectively – forget the architect  of the party – whose ‘Rata Yathra’ across length and breadth of India could bring laurel’s to party and his sincere efforts to rejuvenate it from a meager strength of two members in Parliament enabled it to be the largest single party later. That is an old story. So be it.

Close on the heels of Advani’s hideous preference for Shivraj Singh Chauhan to be the more suitable national leader than Narendra Modi, BJP’s National President Rajnath Sing in a meeting at Hyderabad took the opportunity to paint Mr.Modi as the ‘most popular leader of India’. Whether the gentleman made that statement in a lighter vein? Otherwise how come he declare Modi as the ‘most popular leader of India’? The gentleman is really funny. No doubt. In fact, Modi’s sway in other States except in Gujarat is virtually negligible and the recently held elections to the Assembly in Karnataka where Congress could emerge with a comfortable majority, though many in the party had felt that Modi could create miracles there too.

Even Mr.Modi might have wondered as well elevated at the audacity displayed by Rajnath Singh.

All said and done, one shouldn’t forget the fact that both INC and BJP are unanimous in summoning an early session of Parliament to get Food Security Bill and Land Acquisition Bill passed at the earliest, our mainstream parties hearts go out for the suffering millions at the lower and lowest stratas of society with elections round the corner….Very kind of them. They have awakened from their ‘selective amnesia’. Let God Almighty shower his choices blessings as also (choicest epithets)……………..