So Lalu and Sharad Pawar have guessed right, now it is going to be Modi vs Didi!

Uday Chandra: Imagine a different 2024. Nitish Kumar, named as the Prime Ministerial candidate of India, leads the alliance against Modi-led BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. After the elections, TDP and BJD join this alliance in the name of secularism and pluralism. In Haryana, Congress gets a massive victory due to the strong anti-incumbency wave. In Maharashtra, different factions of Shiv Sena and NCP together formed a strong anti-BJP alliance.

…still struggling to block India

While this may not have been the best situation for the India Block, it also did not lead to the worst situation i.e. disintegration. Congress led a strong parliamentary opposition by securing 99 seats. Major regional parties in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere strengthened their ground against the BJP’s electoral juggernaut.

Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir voted in favor of the India Bloc, much to the disappointment of the BJP. All is not lost, the underperforming opposition is still struggling.

Sharad, Lalu are supporting Mamata

This is the reason why the discussion of Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee leading the India Block is being seriously considered. There may not have been much discussion on this in the last elections, but it is not far-fetched for Banerjee, India’s only woman Chief Minister, to become the President of India. he/she has the best record against BJP in state and national elections.

he/she has the respect of other India Bloc parties, especially RJD, SP and NCP. Veterans like Sharad Pawar and Lalu Yadav are also supporting him/her for this post against the current India Block President Mallikarjun Kharge.

BJP dominates in today’s politics

There is no doubt that Modi-led BJP dominates politics today. With slightly less than 2/5 of the popular vote, it remains in the top spot. Overall, this is equal to the votes polled by Congress, SP, TMC, DMK, RJD, AAP and Left parties at the national level.

The special thing is that in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, one fourth of the voters liked neither NDA nor India Bloc. So, in short, BJP may be the biggest political brand but more than 60% of the voters press the EVM button for non-BJP candidates.

The biggest challenge of the opposition

The biggest challenge of the opposition is to unite the anti-BJP votes. In theory, this requires a clever seat-sharing strategy to ensure a united opposition candidate in both national and state constituencies. By increasing the victory threshold to 51% in a two-horse race, a unified opposition will challenge the BJP to fight for additional votes, especially among women. But, as we have seen this year, smaller parties and independents can reduce BJP’s victory margin to manageable levels.

Congress’s strike rate is worrying

Under these circumstances, the India Bloc parties face a dilemma. The Congress emerged as the largest party in the alliance at the national level, but it contested 326 seats, winning less than a third of them. In state elections this autumn, its strike rate dropped to sixth place. Clearly, Congress is contesting more seats than it should.

At the same time, its regional allies are bargaining hard for a more balanced seat-sharing in the future. In the states going to elections in the next 18 months – Delhi, Bihar and West Bengal – regional parties have a lot to gain at the expense of the Congress.

Then 2024 elections would have been different

In this Lok Sabha, Congress will have to learn to become the anchor of the India Bloc. If this had been done last winter, Nitish Kumar might have got the leadership post he/she wanted and the 2024 elections might have played out differently. Rahul Gandhi’s popular tours and his/her sister Priyanka’s debut as a full-time politician may have energized Congress workers, but the party’s survival should not be taken as a resurgence.

Declining trend will continue

Congress now regularly receives vote transfers from regional parties like SP and NCP, but rarely reciprocates. Between the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress gave up about 100 seats to its alliance partners, but 326 seats out of 543 still seems too many. This downward trend is likely to continue, especially in states dominated by other India Bloc allies.

A new balance of power will be established in the alliance under the leadership of a non-Congress politician like Mamata. To consolidate the non-BJP vote across India, the opposition will have to limit the proportion of seats available to the Congress. Currently, Congress holds 42% of the parliamentary seats won by the alliance. This ratio would mean that by 2029, the India Bloc partners would have to give away 100 more seats.

Effect will be visible in state elections

In poll-bound states, the fallout will be even greater. In Bihar, Congress caused election loss to the grand alliance in 2020. Congress had won only 19 out of 70 seats. Whereas, RJD won 75 out of 144 seats and CPI (ML) won 12 out of 19 seats. If the seat distribution in 2025 is as per the ratio of seats won by the India Bloc partners, the Congress will contest only 45 of the 243 assembly seats. In UP too, he/she may have to take help of Samajwadi Party’s plans to topple the Yogi government.

Congress’s prospects in Delhi and West Bengal are very bad. AAP and TMC are unwilling to accept much and intend to fight BJP alone without any significant third party. The party can either accept whatever is offered to the Congress or face the wrath of its allies by contesting the elections alone. With Mamata taking charge of the India Bloc, the second option is less likely.

Lessons from the mistakes of 2024…

If the India Bloc is to learn from its mistakes in 2024, having a non-Congress president would be a welcome move. Mamata Banerjee, the most successful anti-BJP strategist in the alliance, is now best placed to lead. his/her skills as an experienced politician can ensure smooth communication between colleagues. At the same time, his/her superiority can keep the Congress as a facilitator without preventing it from leading.

Be it NDA or India Bloc, Modi’s successor is less likely to come from Lutyens’ Delhi, rather he/she is less likely to come from any dynamic state of the country. Will Gujarat’s development model give way to Bengal’s welfare model?
(The author is a professor at Georgetown University, Qatar.)