Conclusion Of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra Will Expose The Deep Divide Among Opposition Parties

The conclusion of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Srinagar, 30 January, (Monday) will serve an unintended purpose: it will expose the deep divide among Opposition parties who are desperate to unseat the BJP from power in 2024. 

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote to the chiefs of 21 Opposition parties inviting them to the yatra’s concluding ceremony. Few will show up for the event. 

The latest to excuse himself from the show is Janata Dal (United) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh. The JD(U) chief replied to Kharge expressing his inability to attend due to a pre-scheduled engagement in poll-bound Nagaland.

While Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Yadav will not attend for health reasons, it is not clear if his son and Bihar deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav will make it. 

Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav is unlikely to attend; he had declined to participate in the yatra when it passed through Uttar Pradesh. The other major Opposition leader from UP, BSP’s Mayawati, will not travel to Srinagar. 

Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief and Telangana chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), will not go. Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy will be absent, as will any senior leader from the All India Anna Dravika Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). 

The DMK may depute a leader to Srinagar, and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, who broke away from the Congress over Sonia Gandhi’s leadership of that party, is likely to attend the yatra’s conclusion. 

No leader of any consequence from the east, including northeast, India will travel to Srinagar. And leaders of almost all the major non-Congress opposition parties from the rest of the country will give the event, billed by the Congress as yet another ‘coming-of-age’ show to pitchfork Rahul Gandhi into national centrestage, a miss.

Thus, leave aside Bharat jodo, the January 30 jamboree in Srinagar will not even serve to unite the opposition parties who are united by their common desire to oust the BJP from power in 2024.

No Faith In Rahul’s Leadership

The primary reason for that is the Congress wants the entire Opposition to rally behind Rahul Gandhi, and the opposition parties have no desire to do so. 

“The Congress will project attendance of opposition leaders (at the yatra’s concluding ceremony) as their endorsement of Rahul Gandhi’s leadership of the broad anti-BJP front. That is what we do not want because we do not believe Rahul Gandhi should lead the anti-BJP combine. He does not have the qualities to do so and the Congress itself does not have the capability of mounting a strong opposition to the BJP,” a top leader of the Trinamool who is close to party chairperson Mamata Banerjee told Swarajya. 

A JD(U) leader spoke in a similar vein. “We have decided not to send our party president because that would have been construed as the JD(U)’s endorsement of Rahul Gandhi as the leader of the anti-BJP combine and boosted the Congress attempt to project him as a Prime Ministerial candidate,” a senior JD(U) leader told Swarajya. 

The RJD is also unsure of what it will do because it has already committed itself to projecting Nitish Kumar as the leader of an anti-BJP front and as the Prime Ministerial candidate of such a proposed front. Tejaswi Yadav’s presence in Srinagar will be quickly projected by the Congress as the RJD’s approval of Rahul Gandhi as the leader of an anti-BJP front. That can create tensions within Bihar’s ruling mahagathbandhan. 

Telangana chief minister KCR has been a strong advocate of an opposition front that excludes the Congress. He has been steadfast in his belief that only a non-Congress and non-BJP dispensation will be good for the country. He views Rahul Gandhi as an immature person who, he told a CPI(M) leader, lacks requisite skills to even become a panchayat pradhan!

Other Opposition leaders also hold a dim view of Rahul Gandhi’s qualities or skills, or the dismal lack of them. Rahul Gandhi, they collectively feel, has zero qualifications for the top post of the country and would be a disaster.  

The Congress itself doesn’t trust the YSRCP, AIADMK and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) of Odisha and views these three parties as being close to the BJP. Hence, it leaves out these three major parties out of the reckoning whenever it speaks of forging an anti-BJP front. 

From Maharashtra, it is only the NCP chief Sharad Pawar who is likely to travel to Srinagar early next week. Shiv Sena (Uddhav) chief Uddhav Thackeray is not likely to go, and neither will his son Aditya. At best, the party will depute its controversial leader Sanjay Raut. 

The leadership of the CPI(M) in Kerala, where the Marxist party is pitted against the Congress, will not go to faraway Kashmir. Doing so would undermine their opposition to the Congress in their own state. Only a couple of leaders of the party’s central committee or its politburo may attend the conclusion of Rahul Gandhi’s show. 

Thus, from southern India, only the DMK may depute its top leaders to Srinagar and from the west, only Sharad Pawar is likely to give company to Rahul Gandhi on 30 January. There will be no major Opposition leader from northern or eastern India in Srinagar that day. As for Northeast, none of the regional parties which hold any political relevance will mark their presence in Srinagar early next week. 

Thus, apart from the absence of top Opposition leaders from non-Congress parties acting as a big damper to the Congress’ plans to project Rahul Gandhi as the leader of an anti-BJP conglomerate, the concluding ceremony of the yatra will also serve to underline why the opposition will remain fragmented and fractious. 

Fractious and distrustful opposition 

The primary reason for that is the competing and conflicting ambitions of the leaders of the non-Congress opposition parties. And also the fact that they do not trust each other; each believes that the other will do deals behind their back.

Also, neither of them will concede an inch to realise their own dream of the prime ministership, which, they all feel, is the fruit of their strong opposition to the BJP. All of them believe they have it in them to become the Prime Minister of the country and none of the others have those qualities. 

Mamata Banerjee holds the unshakeable belief that in the event of the BJP failing to bag a majority in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, all other parties (including the Congress) should back her for the Prime Minister’s post. She believes she will make an excellent PM and none of the leaders of other opposition parties quite measure up to her. She is also disdainful of Rahul Gandhi and his ‘capabilities’. 

The JD(U) feels that Nitish Kumar has proven himself as a capable administrator and none other than Kumar deserves to be the Prime Minister. Top JD(U) leaders are, in private, dismissive of Mamata Banerjee’s claims to the PM’s post and speak disparagingly of her lack of governance skills, her mercurial nature, short temper and her dictatorial tendencies. 

Telangana’s KCR fancies himself as the most capable chief minister of India and ardently believes that he, and only he, has the qualities and skills to be an effective Prime Minister. He is determined to thwart any bid by any of his rivals--primarily Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar--to become the PM. 

All these regional opposition parties are engaged, very intensively but deftly, in undercutting each other. And also in denying the Congress an opportunity to project Rahul Gandhi as a future Prime Minister of India. 

January 30, will, in all probability, mark not only the start of the unravelling of the Opposition’s dream of unseating Modi, but also the beginning of another home run by the BJP.