National

Tomorrow Is A Foreign Country

No party, however ready, is jumping the gun. Impending assembly elections are the key to any ‘early’ decision.

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Tomorrow Is A Foreign Country
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Every time a constituent quits the ruling UPA-II alliance, it triggers talk of early elections. Along with the standard, poker-faced claims of “stability” from government comes the buzz in corridors of Parliament about late-night political machinations, as “off the record” briefings keep scribes on their toes.

But can a cloudy sky guarantee a good monsoon? Many present and ex-allies of the Congress don’t think so. The main opposition party is not keen to bring a no-confidence motion, while the TMC and DMK have specifically ruled it out. Sources say that neither Mulayam nor Mayawati, providers of crucial outside support, are going to torpedo the regime immediately.

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Samajwadi Party and BSP insiders have enough reasons to give you. Mulayam Yadav knows the state government in Uttar Pradesh led by his son, Akhilesh Yadav, has been quite a disaster. He wants the state to focus on distributing laptops, tablets and unemployment allowances for the next few months to tidy up its report card. Still, he is an old Congress baiter. So, in lieu of his support, he would be extracting visible and silent gains, while losing no opportunity to try and make the Congress look small. Also, a caveat in the Mulayam story must be the fact of his old ambition to be PM. He would be waiting for the right opportunity to present itself.

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Mayawati, conversely, is certain that the longer Mulayam and Akhilesh are in power, sentiments of anti-incumbency and discontent can only get stronger. She is confident of returning as the queen of the coalition game. Meanwhile, she is on her best behaviour vis-a-vis the UPA. “We are supporting the government from outside and will continue doing that. We don’t want the government to fall, though we have finalised tickets for all 80 parliamentary seats in UP and other states as well. The BSP is ready for polls anytime,” party leader Ram Achal Rajbhar told Outlook.

As the BSP and Samajwadi Party have finalised their candidates in UP for the general elections, they are in a sense both battle-ready. Rahul Gandhi has also asked the UP Con­gress leaders to prepare for polls, but currently their prospects are considered dismal in a state where it won 22 Lok Sabha seats in 2009. But why is Rahul thinking of polls if the government in Delhi is “stable”?

“He only wants to say that any party should keep itself ready for elections. There is nothing wrong in it. There’s no fear of instability in the Centre, no possibility of early elections. A lot of work-schemes, programmes and bills are pending. We want the government to complete its work and then go for election,” says Congress leader Shakeel Ahmad.

Whether partnering the Congress is a liability or not, UPA-II allies are also not ready or willing to countenance early polls. “I don’t see a possibility of early elections. Every time something happens, this question has been asked, but has the government fallen? Doesn’t it have the numbers? Let the government complete its tenure and then go for the election,” says the NCP’s Devi Prasad Tripathi.

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Leaders of the TMC—which abandoned the UPA-II long back—say they too are poll-ready. West Bengal panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee told Outlook: “Mamata talked about early polls in a party forum, which means that she sincerely wants us to get ready for elections. She obviously thinks that the UPA regime is a minority government which might fall any day—hence the clarion call to get ready well ahead of schedule.”

TMC MP and veteran Saugata Roy says, “One can’t deny the possibility of early elections, but I see less scope for such a situation. But why this hypothetical debate? Better wait and watch. There is no point of asking if we’re ready for elections or not. All parties have to face elections as and when they take place.” There is speculation whether the ‘minority’ regime would send overtures to Mamata, to help bail them out in a crisis. So is there any possibility of the TMC and Congress making up? “No way,” says party general secretary Mukul Roy. Sultan Ahmed, former Union minister, says that “Congress spin doctors are projecting this to get over the embarrassment of the DMK’s departure.”

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“The repeated chants of stability can’t take away the worries—of course there is a problem,” says CPI leader D. Raja. “The government at the Centre is a minority government. They say they lost nothing and are stable. I say, they have lost their credibility completely.” Raja refuses to speculate on elections.

Finally, the BJP is still stuck on the issue of leadership for the Lok Sabha polls and that of a prime ministerial candidate. “The central government is in ICU. A single small mistake will sink them. It’s a government moving with the support of two shoulders—Mayawati and Mulayam. Any of them twists and the government would fall,” says party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad. But party sources reveal it suits them to prolong the UPA’s agony a little longer as they get their own house in order.

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For now, the BJP and the Congress would both like to focus on critical assembly elections coming up later in the year—Karnataka is going for polls in May, seven more ‘bellwether’ states, including MP, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Chhatt­i­s­garh and Delhi, will vote for their assemblies in the second half of the year. Though issues and mandates for state assemblies are not bound to reflect the themes of a Lok Sabha poll, a certain trend could indeed be read. Experts say this points to any possibility of, or even decision about, an early election only in the second half of 2013.

By Panini Anand with S.N.M. Abdi

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