© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
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Journalism of Courage
The Shiv Sena’s decision to support NDA’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu is a fresh setback for Yashwant Sinha, whose campaign has floundered the moment the BJP announced the former Jharkhand Governor, a tribal leader from Odisha, as its nominee.
It was never meant to be an extremely tight race — the Opposition had, in fact, framed the contest as a fight between two ideologies — but the campaign has unravelled faster than expected.
Sinha’s candidature has split the Opposition. The BSP, JD(S) and Akali Dal announced support to Murmu; ties between allies Congress and the JMM in Jharkhand are strained as the latter, which heads the government, is set to be leaning towards backing the NDA nominee.
This has put even Sinha’s backers like the Trinamool Congress in a quandary. The only boost the Opposition got was support from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
The Opposition is hoping that the Aam Aadmi Party – which, like the TRS, is locked in a bitter battle with the BJP — would extend support to Sinha, who has visited several state capitals over the last fortnight as part of his whirlwind campaign tour.
The first signs of discomfiture in the Opposition camp were visible when West Bengal Chief Minister, whose Trinamool Congress suggested Sinha’s candidature and got the other opposition parties to accept her choice, said Murmu could have been a consensus candidate had the NDA reached out to the Opposition proposing her name.
The TMC leadership then quietly conveyed to Sinha, who was a senior office-bearer of the Trinamool and had resigned from the party to become the candidate, that he need not squeeze in a visit to Kolkata in his hectic campaign itinerary as Banerjee will ensure that all TMC votes will be polled in his favour. The real reason was different — electoral imperatives.
And the JMM has the same worry.
The Trinamool Congress does not wish to antagonise the tribal population in the state. The Santhal community has a sizeable presence in the Jangalmahal region spread across four districts with five Lok Sabha seats and nearly three dozen Assembly segments. The BJP’s choice had put Banerjee in a quandary.
The JMM, too, is in a dilemma for the same reason despite the fact that Sinha is from Jharkhand. Hemant Soren cannot afford to send a wrong signal to the tribals, the mainstay of his party.
The decision of Mayawati’s BSP, H D Deve Gowda’s JD(S) and the Badal-controlled Akali Dal to back Murmu has sent a message that the Opposition is divided. It’s another matter that the BSP had been keeping a distance from the Opposition group and the Akali Dal has never been part of the camp. But given their opposition to the BJP, the expectation was that they would back Sinha.
The Shiv Sena’s decision is a desperate attempt by the embattled Uddhav Thackeray group to avert a split in its parliamentary party as close to a dozen of its MPs had asked him to extend support to Murmu. An official decision to back Sinha would have resulted in Sena MPs cross voting — a scenario which Uddhav wanted to avoid.
But many in the Opposition parties argue they were not surprised by the stance adopted. Sinha’s candidature, they admit, exposed the limitations of the Opposition camp in terms of political thinking, imagination and strategy. His candidature was not an out-of-the box choice and consequently did not provide any pull in terms of a message, social or political.
With Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah and Gopal Krishna Gandhi publicly rejecting the Opposition’s overtures, the parties were forced to settle for Sinha, a former BJP veteran.
The Congress, cut up with the Trinamool Congress’s unexpected move to convene an Opposition meeting, sought to play a passive role signalling its willingness to accept any name who was acceptable. The Left, too, played along. And the contest remained a non-starter.
