Congress yielding on PM candidate a smart move

Ceding ground to other opposition parties and regional leaders may help in stitching together a united front against India’s ruling BJP

After the hug and the wink, a step back. India’s Congress party’s realisation, albeit belatedly, that Rahul Gandhi still does not have the gravitas required to become the prime minister will be generally welcomed. Evidently, the party is becoming more mature along with its president.

The retreat by Rahul in favour of regional leaders will enable the opposition at the national level to focus more effectively on the issue, which is just as well because of the number of aspirants. As the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Tejashwi Yadav has said, there are at least four in the fray (apart from Rahul): Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Chandrababu Naidu and Sharad Pawar.

Of the four, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata and former Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister Mayawati can be regarded as front-runners. Both have made their intentions clear and are trying, for each of their parties, to win as many Lok Sabha seats as possible to buttress their claims. Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata’s aim is to win all the 42 parliamentary seats in Bengal. Since her party has 34 at present, her expectations cannot be said to be too high. However, winning all the Lok Sabha constituencies will not be easy at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seemingly gaining ground because of the prevailing lawlessness in the state that was seen during the recent panchayat (local rural body) polls. As for Mayawati, her desire to have a nationwide alliance with the Congress and not in Madhya Pradesh alone, as the latter wants, is obviously intended to widen the prospect of her outfit, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), winning a fair number of seats.

In this respect, the Telugu Desam with 16 seats and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) with seven may be theoretically ahead of the BSP. But they have several disadvantages. For a start, as a south Indian party, the Telugu Desam may find the going tough in a political milieu where north Indian parties tend to be well ahead of those from elsewhere in terms of the popular perception about their successful strike rate. The reasons are, first, their fluency in Hindi that is understood nearly all over India; and, second, because, historically, north Indian politicians have dominated the corridors of power in New Delhi.

The NCP’s Pawar is another claimant, although he has never said so himself; nor has Naidu. But though now an elder statesman, the 78-year-old Pawar, who became chief minister of Maharashtra at the age of 38, and has held a number of major portfolios at the centre, is now past his prime.

That leaves the two women — Mamata and Mayawati. Before considering their cases, it has to be remembered that the last word may not have been said about Rahul yet. If the Congress sweeps the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh assembly elections and does fairly well in Chhattisgarh, it would have overcome much of the ignominy of its present lowly status in the Lok Sabha with just 48 seats and think of taking on the BJP almost on equal terms in 2019. That will make Rahul a serious contender.

It is understandable, therefore, why the non-BJP parties have kept their options open about the prime ministerial candidate till after the elections. Their hope is that the numbers will be the decisive factor and make the choice for them. But there is also the need for those not in the running such as Sonia Gandhi to play a mediatory role of the kind Jayaprakash Narayan and J.B. Kripalani had played in 1977 to calm tempers and massage the egos.

■ Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst.

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