Wednesday, November 6, 2024
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The new centrifuge

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By Indranil Banerjea

It is emerging rapidly that Jaganmohan Reddy will be the next centrifuge of any coalition that takes power at the Centre. As the Congress dithers on Telengana, suspends its own MPs and essentially makes a hash of things, the Andhra pot continues to boil.

Why, one may ask, will Jagan be the new centrifuge? Won’t the BJP as the principal opposition party be the big brother in any new formation? Of course, it will be, but the math across the poll map of the country provides insights into what may be the final outcome in 2014. Yes, 2014 is a long way off, so why am I getting off the blocks so early. Simple, a mini- referendum is set to take place in the same Andhra Pradesh on June 12, when one Lok Sabha constituency and 18 assembly segments go to the polls.

There is every possibility that Jagan, all fire and brimstone against the Congress so far, will side with the BJP in the next round. And once he does that, he becomes a very powerful player in whatever form and shape the new combine takes. Nitish Kumar, Navin Patnaik, J. Jayalalitha, Mamata Banerjee (who knows?), and the wild card in the pack, Jagan Mohan Reddy, all aligning with the BJP, will see a major regrouping of forces.

I am not getting ahead of the curve, but looking at an emerging scenario that doesn’t portend well for the ruling dispensation either in the state or at the Centre. Interestingly, AP assembly elections took place in 2009, so the state will have two sets of elections in 2014. In 2009, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy returned to power with 156 seats, a reduced mandate from the stunning win in 2004, when he garnered 185 out of the 294 assembly seats.

The four states that return the maximum number of MPs to the Lok Sabha are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. All told they return 80 plus 50 plus 48 plus 42, making a round figure of 220 MPs. Both in the 2004 and 2009 general elections, the Congress used the rump provided by YSR in AP to come to power at the Centre. In 2009, YSR brought in 33 MPs; in 2004, he returned 29 MPs.

In 2009, when the Congress bagged 206 seats, the highest number of MPs came from AP, followed by UP (21), Rajasthan (20) and Maharashtra (17). Ditto in 2004, when the Congress came to power with 145 seats. Andhra and YSR delivered in spades with 29; Maharashtra (13), Gujarat (12) and Tamil Nadu (10) were laggards in comparison.

The point here is that Andhra Pradesh has been the differentiator — in many ways the killer application that has brought the Congress back to power and then help it retain it.

Unfortunately, YSR’s untimely and at one level slightly mysterious death muddied the waters for the Congress in AP. Habituated with shooting itself in the foot, the Congress went and queered the pitch for itself rapidly thereafter. When YSR’s son and heir Jaganmohan was being projected as the claimant to the throne, the “high command” neutralised him by electing a consensus candidate — K. Rosaiah.

Since then, the ruling party has hurtled from one crisis to another in Andhra. A state that practically guaranteed success for the Congress since the elevation of YSR as CM is now more or less a millstone around its neck. Things have come to such a sorry pass that there are no takers for Congress tickets for the Andhra by elections.

Recent reports suggest that several Congress candidates have backed out because public sentiment is so intense. Public sentiment is intense not just for the creation of Telengana, but increasingly for the anointment of Jagan Reddy as the CM. In this vacuum, the YSR Congress holds sway in Andhra politics now.

By keeping the issue of Telengana in suspended animation, the Centre has only created many more complications for itself. Soon after YSR’s death, Jagan declared his intent to take over the mantle, but this was unacceptable to Delhi. In a public revolt against Rosaiah, Jagan Reddy made it absolutely clear that it was now or never. By November 2010, he walked out of the Congress.

Impatience being his bugbear, Jagan should have realised that a vulture is a patient bird. But the impetuosity of youth and eagerness to grab power tripped him. Many yatras later, including a fabled train journey to Delhi, he still awaits what he believes is rightfully his. Politics at the end of the day is about elections as Team Anna may have also realised to their chagrin.

Electoral politics is also about playing the waiting game, engaging with the hoi- polloi and striking at the right time.

In May 2011, Jagan swept Kadapah, his family’s pocket borough by five lakh votes; the other contestants lost their deposits. Significantly, his mother Vijaylakshmi, equally cut up with the Congress, also won the Pulivendula assembly seat by 85,000 votes. The banner of simmering revolt had been thrown flush in the face of the Congress in Delhi.

As if all this wasn’t enough, home minister P. Chidambaram, on the fateful night of December 9, 2009, bunged in a big ugly monkey wrench in the mix by announcing that the Indian government would start the process of forming a separate Telangana state, pending the introduction and passage of a separation resolution in the AP assembly.

This resulted in demonstrations across both Andhra and Rayalseema, and MLAs from these regions submitted their resignations in protest.

Under pressure, on December 23, the Centre announced that no action on Telangana will be taken until a consensus is reached by all parties. Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema region MLAs started withdrawing their resignations, even as the MLAs and ministers from Telangana started submitting theirs, and demanded that the Centre take immediate steps to initiate the process of bifurcating Andhra Pradesh. Since then, the drama of mass resignations has continued non- stop. Also, it has brought pain suffering and misery to the people of the Telengana region in AP. Lives have been lost, dislocated, and in many cases virtually caught in a time warp. Accentuating the pain and problems for Andhra was former home secretary Gopal Pillai’s damaging announcement on December 11, 2009, where he said Hyderabad will be Telengana’s capital. Already under a fusillade, he hastily retracted his statement. The best barometer for the future of Andhra/ Telengana came in March this year when K. Chandrasekhara Rao’s Telengana Rashtriya Samiti scored big winning four of the seven by elections. The Congress is loath to non-bifurcating the state; the constituents that make up the state want it.

The Srikrishna Report has come and gone. Throw Jagan into the mix and the numbers — 33 and 29 Lok Sabha MPs respectively in two successive elections — look more and more remote even as the hustings loom large on the radar. INAV

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