These are testing times, indeed, for the two main national parties — the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But the challenge right now is coming not from each other as much as their respective coalition allies. Last week saw West Bengal Chief Minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee — whose Trinamool Congress is formally part of the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) — unilaterally projecting the former President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, as her candidate for the next presidential race. The Congress has managed to ward off that threat for the moment, while officially declaring the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, as its choice and getting the approval of other UPA partners. Ms Banerjee’s defiance is, of course, not new: It has been instrumental in the UPA Government having to rollback key decisions, from allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail and rationalising rail passenger fares to signing a pact on sharing of Teesta river waters with Bangladesh.
Somewhat new are the rumblings within the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), coming especially from an old and much less fractious constituent: the Bihar Chief Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) or JD(U). The latter has not only refused to endorse the candidate the BJP has decided to back — former Lok Sabha Speaker, Mr P.A. Sangma — but added insult to injury by announcing its support for Mr Mukherjee. But JD(U) has not limited its opposition to just next month’s presidential elections. Mr Kumar has even suggested that the NDA’s prime ministerial face for the 2014 general elections should have “secular credentials” — a remark clearly targeting Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. The latter’s ‘pro-Hindutva’ image, besides a reputation as a dynamic administrator, makes him ideal Prime Minister material to many in the BJP, or at least its core constituency. The party has not strongly responded to Mr Kumar, though, probably finding itself in the same position as the Congress vis-à-vis Ms Banerjee.
There is a certain underlying rationale to both Ms Banerjee’s and Mr Kumar’s actions. It suits Ms Banerjee to be in the UPA Government and still oppose any decision her party regards as ‘anti-people’, in the hope that the resultant public disaffection would scar the Congress, which heads the ruling alliance at the Centre. Mr Kumar’s anti-Modi barbs are, likewise, meant to keep JD(U)’s support among minorities intact and simultaneously draw on BJP’s traditional upper-caste vote bank. Whether these attempts at product differentiation would work on the ground remains to be seen; but there is no doubting the damage that they have caused to the parties ostensibly heading the two major alliances. The presidential elections could well be the start of a federal (‘Fourth’) front, comprising parties from Trinamool and JD(U) to the AIADMK and Biju Janata Dal (Mr Sangma’s name was actually proposed by the last two). Unless the Congress and BJP do something different now, they may end up supporting a government they will not even formally head.