Opposition still working out unity ABCs, one phrase isn’t helping: ‘B-team of BJP’

In this flux, one of the clearest signs of the strained ties among Opposition players are accusations levelled by them at each other of being the BJP’s “B-team”.

The Congress has previously called the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musalameem (AIMIM) the BJP’s B-team accusing them of cutting votes in favour of the BJP. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has levied the charge about the AIMIM, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) spoke similarly of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has put the tag on the Congress and the CPI(M).

Speaking at a press conference on November 1 in Hyderabad during the Bharat Jodo Yatra there, the Congress’s general secretary of communications, Jairam Ramesh, called the AAP the “B-team of the BJP”. He asserted that the fight in the Gujarat polls – held in December 2022 – was between the BJP and the Congress. He alleged that the India Against Corruption organisation, from which the AAP emerged, was a front orgainstion for the RSS.

A month earlier, on September 28 2022, Pawan Khera, the Congress’s media and publicity department chairman, attempted to illustrate the charge against the AIMIM in the context of the Madhya Pradesh civic body polls.

In a tweet, he said: “Congress party’s mayor candidate Shahnaz Ismail Alam lost by 388 Votes, #BJP won. Burhanpur final result: BJP: 52,629; INC: 52,241; AIMIM: 10,322; AAP: 2,908. You can see how strategically the B teams of BJP make the party win.”

AIMIM supremo and Hyderabad MP Asauddin Owaisi reacted sharply, remarking that the “BJP is ‘cutting’ more Congress votes than anyone else. It must demand that BJP stop contesting”. He added, “INC should explain why: 1. It’d win only 28/209 seats against BJP even with perfect opposition unity 2. In 2019, it won only 15/186 LS seats where it was in direct fight with BJP.”

In an interview with PTI before the elections in Gujarat, where his party contested 13 out of the 182 seats, Owaisi spoke similarly and said, “Why is the Congress levelling allegations against us? Is it to hide its own deficiencies? The BJP has been in power in Gujarat for the last 27 years, only the Congress was in the Opposition. Who had stopped the Congress from defeating the BJP, and why had they failed to defeat them for nearly three decades? The Congress must first answer this question.”

At a press conference in Jammu in January 2022, Ramesh again accused the AAP and AIMIM along with rebel Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s Democratic Azad Party (DAP) of cutting into Congress votes.

Speaking at a rally ahead of the Gopalganj Yodapur bypoll in November 2022, RJD leader and Bihar Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav called the AIMIM the “team B” of the BJP. “The BJP is a Hindu-Muslim, temple-mosque party,” news agency ANI quoted Yadav as saying.

A Hyderabad-based party, the AIMIM won five seats in the Seemanchal region of Bihar in the state’s polls in 2020; four of the five MLAs of the party though went on to join the RJD.

On March 13 this year, SP president Akhilesh Yadav said the BSP worked like “the BJP’s B team”, adding that the BSP’s candidates for the 2022 Assembly polls were decided at the BJP’s office, in a bid to keep his party at bay. His remarks came two days after BSP leader Umashankar Singh had accused Akhilesh of being the “B team” of the BJP.

“The BSP has lost the path shown by Dr BR Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. The party is with the BJP. In the Vidhan Sabha elections, the BSP candidates were not fielded to win, but to check the SP from getting ahead,” Akhilesh said.

Similar charges were thrown about ahead of the recent Northeast elections. At an election rally in Shillong, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lashed out at the TMC. “They (the TMC) came to Goa and spent huge amounts of money in Goa. The idea was to help the BJP. This is exactly the idea in Meghalaya. The TMC’s idea in Meghalaya is to ensure that the BJP is strengthened and wins.”

A day later, TMC mouthpiece “Jago Bangla” said in an editorial: “During the Assembly elections in West Bengal, the Congress worked as a B-team of the BJP. Now, the Left, Congress and BJP have openly joined hands.”