ALLIES DESERT CONGRESS AT MIDNIGHT

Chinks in Opposition unity have become pronounced. The Vice President’s election may further highlight the fissures.

In politics a week is a long time and this is what the 17 Opposition parties that got together to seek support for their joint Presidential candidate, Meira Kumar, must have realised on Friday. Ironically, the fallout in the Maha Gathbandhan (Grand Alliance) took place on the issue of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation, which brought to fore the differences amongst the allies.

The Congress, which sought to take the lead in forging the Opposition unity, found itself pushed into a corner, along with the Left parties, Trinamool Congress, the DMK and some others, while its last week’s partners, the Nationalist Congress Party ( NCP), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) decided to break ranks and attend the gala event held in the Central Hall of Parliament to mark the launch of the new tax regime. The midnight ceremony was a precursor to the collapse of the superficial unity among the Opposition parties, which was visibly fragile from the outset in the absence of any tangible common ground and the evident ambiguity regarding the overall leadership of the alliance.

NCP supremo Sharad Pawar attended the function, along with his daugh- ter Supriya Sule and party colleagues to drive home the point to the Congress unequivocally that his support could not be taken for granted. Pawar’s stand became politically significant, since Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s aides had spent over three hours last week to convince him to support Meira Kumar’s candidature. Pawar was reluctant, since in his estimation, the alliance nominee had zero chance of winning and therefore to take on the collective might of the National Democratic Alliance