A straight contest between the NDA and the INDIA alliance can never be guaranteed, as there are fence-sitters and nonpartisan parties

In the First Past the Post System (FPPS) in vogue in India, as well as in the UK (which rejected through a referendum a switchover to proportional representation), the opposition must learn to bury the hatchet in the spirit of esprit de corps so that it can field a common candidate in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. Otherwise, a split vote is a sure recipe for perpetuating the winner-takes-it-all distortion our polity has been a witness to. In the 2024 elections, the INDIA alliance came pretty close to dislodging the NDA. That modicum of success should egg it on to embrace more fully the Janata Party umbrella model of 1977, in which both king-size egos and ideologies were buried for the sake of a loftier goal.

That the extreme right, the Jana Sangh, the BJP’s precursor, and the extreme left, the CPM, joined the Janata Party speaks volumes of the overarching desire not to allow Indira Gandhi, the architect of the infamous emergency of 1975, to return to power. It is another matter that the Janata experiment lasted just two years, with the socialist Madhu Limaye throwing the gauntlet at the Jana Sangh—ask your members to abjure the RSS or quit the government. He was fulminating against dual membership that meant divided loyalties. He forgot that the Sanghis wear their dual loyalties proudly on their sleeves. 

The INDIA alliance should not be built only on the united opposition plank. In addition, it must offer credible changes to the status quo. Shrill rants like ‘vote chori’ and ‘EVM manipulation’ don’t strike a chord with the electorate, like the recent Bihar elections showed. It should raise a banner of revolt against the freebie culture by building public opinion against it, including forcing the apex court’s hands-off policy. The Supreme Court has passed the buck on to the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is loath to touch the raw nerve. A Constitution bench of the apex court should be made to spell out what is welfarism and what is a freebie. Instead of riling against the EVM, it should make a case for voters casting their vote in order of preference—first preference vote for the BJP, second for the Congress, and so forth. While the minutiae have to be skipped, lest it make the article prolix, the idea is to break away from the extant FPPS model by ensuring only a candidate who has 50% backing of the electorate wins.

Another significant reform it must campaign for is the prevention of horse-trading without any latitude—anyone switching to another party, whether with two-thirds support for the breakaway group or through Operation Lotus, i.e., by engineering resignations where a two-thirds defection cannot be engineered and then winning, wearing the robes of the other party he wants to defect to, must be punished with a 5-year ban on contesting elections. Liberals may baulk at the drastic reform for the same reason they baulk at party whips constricting one’s political freedom, but then horse-trading has been a bane of our electoral process. The BJP has, in the past, gotten over the two-thirds requirement in the anti-defection law by the stratagem of Operation Lotus. 

All these reformist agendas will have to wait till the INDIA alliance agrees upon the moot issue—who will be the prime minister or the leader of the opposition post polls? The answer can be simple—the leader of the largest constituent would have that honour. But even this could be resented by the regional satraps who have to be mollified. Therefore, the more acceptable formula could be each taking a shot at power in proportion to the seats won. This might result in a mockery with multiple prime ministers in a single term. But given the vaulting ambitions of the constituents, the farce of multiple prime ministers for short spans seems to be a lesser evil than the disgruntled elements breaking the non-binding solidarity. In any case, the leader of the largest constituent getting to lead for five years smacks of FPPS playing out again, this time round in the power-sharing sweepstakes. 

There are more than three years for the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. The INDIA alliance has to get its act together quickly and contest the upcoming assembly elections as well as those in the run-up to the 2029 Lok Sabha elections on the basis of the larger agreement forged for the Lok Sabha elections—microcosms should follow the same discipline crafted for the macrocosm, though it is easier said than done. Congress still feels it is a national party with footprints across the nation. The Congress has such indelible footprints only in select states south of Vindhyas and in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Chhattisgarh, but it refuses to see the reality and instead throws its hats in all the rings. While the regional parties might get down from their high horses, the Congress, with its inbred arrogance, may prove to be a stumbling block in pre-defining the contours of the alliance.

That said, a straight contest between the NDA and the INDIA can never be guaranteed. There are fence-sitters and nonpartisan parties. The YSR Congress in Andhra, AIMIM of Owaisi, and the BJD in Orissa are cases in point. They may stay fiercely independent and non-aligned. New kids on the block, like Jan Suraaj in Bihar, too, can upset the opposition applecart and calculus. In short, a straight contest is desirable under the FPPS until it is replaced by the fairer proportional representation system but cannot be guaranteed across the country. There are sub-regional parties within a region in the manner of wheels within wheels. 

A word about the return of the prodigals—Sharad Pawar’s NCP, Mamata’s TMC, and the YRS Congress—to the Indian National Congress, as wistfully pined for by the political romanticists, to strengthen its hands. Will they? No, sir. Pawar has minced no words, he will not work under Rahul Gandhi. Mamata, too, will not, nor would Jagan Mohan Reddy. They all broke away to pitch their own tents, to which a large number of Congressmen have fled. The truncated Congress must go it alone or come under the umbrella of the INDIA alliance duly chastised.