Anti-Congress, non-BJP coalition?

POLITICS

analysis shubhabrata bhattacharya

 

Anti-Congress, non-BJP coalition?

The scenario of the sum total of the seats won by the Congress and BJP falling short of the halfway mark of 272 has not emerged in the coalition era so far

 

march 17, 2013, is perhaps a watershed day in the march to the next general elections. That day, Bihar supremo Nitish Kumar held a mammoth rally in Delhi’s Ramlila grounds to flex his political muscle and highlight the cause of treating Bihar as a special state for development.

 

There are nearly 40 lakh migrants from Bihar who live in the NCR region; Nitish successfully showed the role he can play in tilting the scale both in the forthcoming Assembly elections in New Delhi as well as his position vis-a-vis the 2014 (or earlier) post-general election political scenario. He had dinner at the home of his distinguished JP movement comrade, Arun Jaitley, that evening.

 

The intrinsic message of his triumphant trip to New Delhi was his statement that the time has come for the formation of an ‘anti-Congress, non-BJP’ regime” in New Delhi. Read carefully, his call was to revive the anti-Congressism of the grand alliance days.

 

Importance of the political formations sans the two major parties is evident: they have polled half of the total votes in the seven general elections since 1989. In the last two polls, in 2004 and in 2009, the Congress had 26.2 per cent and 28,6 per cent of the vote share while the BJP polled 21.7 per cent and 18.8 per cent, respectively...Read More