With about 20 months left for the next Parliament polls, the political temperature has begun warming up – this even as the ruling BJP at the Centre continues to remain in pole position and the Opposition fragmented. Rahul Gandhi is starting a Bharat Jodo Yatra a fortnight hence from Kanyakumari and Arvind Kejriwal of the AAP has announced a nation-wide Yatra to drum up support for his attempt to position himself as a rival to PM Modi. There’s talk from Bihar to pack off Nitish Kumar to Delhi for him to take the “centre-stage” and rally the anti-BJP forces with an eye on the 2024 Parliament polls.
The BJP has, meanwhile, adopted a two-pronged strategy of winning allies and taking on rivals like Mamata Banerjee of the TMC in Bengal and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi by unleashing the central investigation agencies to conduct raids and paint these leaders as corrupt. While raid parties hit upon a huge stock of hoarded currency in a flat linked to a Bengal minister, they had no such luck awaiting them at Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia’s residence. But the allegations that the AAP government indulged in corruption via its liquor policy won wide publicity. Curiously, the raid on Sisodia took place after Kejriwal made four trips to Gujarat in a month’s time to activate the AAP against the BJP in the Modi-Shah bastion. Undaunted, Kejriwal and Sisodia flew down on a two-day visit to Gujarat this week to take forward the AAP campaign for the December polls. Notably, as the BJP lost a powerful ally in Bihar in the form of Nitish Kumar and his JDU, and had lost another strong entity the Akali Dal of the Badals in Punjab, the saffron party is seeking to make it up with an offensive against the ruling TRS in Telangana. Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to the Telugu turf this week was to work the BJP’s way through cine stars and media barons to oust the TRS and wrest power there in the assembly polls next year.
Rahul Gandhi might be scheduling his Bharat Jodo Yatra that would culminate at the time the Congress party elects or selects a new president for the party by September 20. During his sojourn through states, he would prepare the ground for the Congress party’s foray into the campaign for the 2024 parliament elections as also the string of assembly polls before this. Yet, unity of the Opposition – a sine qua non for their LS electoral success — remains a distant dream.
