2024: The shape of the Opposition front

We are now halfway through the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance’s second term in office, and there has been a lot of buzz around the nature and shape of the Opposition that will take it on in 2024. At one level, it may be premature to talk of this because the Uttar Pradesh (UP) elections of 2022 will be an important factor. The performance of the Samajwadi Party — analysts are veering around to the view that UP is a bipolar contest between the BJP and it, with the former at an advantage — will play a key role in deciding the construct of the Opposition in 2024, with the caveat about voters often voting differently in state and national polls. After all, the Congress went into 2019 on a high, winning elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.

And at another level, it may be out of place to talk about an Opposition front minus the Congress because the mathematics does not make sense. Leave alone winning a majority, it is unlikely that an Opposition minus the Congress will even contest more than half the seats in the elections. While the Congress’s performance in 2014 and 2019 does not inspire confidence, and it has bumbled from one crisis to another, it remains the only national Opposition party (unless the Aam Aadmi Party or the Trinamool Congress wins another state). And while a 1996-like scenario, where the Congress supports an Opposition front from the outside, is possible, it isn’t probable. There is, thus, merit in what Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena said on Tuesday — that there can be no Opposition front without the Congress. What we are witnessing now is the elaborate jockeying for pole position of the Opposition front. It is something likely to continue through 2022 and 2023 — and a consensus will be difficult to reach.