With the sudden implosion of a regional party such as the Trinamool Congress (TMC) within weeks of its defeat in West Bengal and a second split set to take place in the Shiv Sena (UBT), the signal has gone out that the sands are shifting rapidly and, in time, other regional parties could also be headed the same way.
It is the speed with which the parties are unravelling and the scale on which the splits are taking place that have taken many by surprise. The 80-MLA-strong TMC broke up in the West Bengal Assembly within weeks of its defeat and this was followed by 20 of the 28 Lok Sabha MPs of the party announcing both their bloc’s merger with a little-known party called the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) and support for the BJP-led NDA in Parliament. And on Monday, the rebel MLAs replaced Banerjee herself as the TMC chairperson, setting the stage for a court battle over who constitutes the real party.
It is hardly a secret that after its defeat in the Lok Sabha in April, the BJP would like to move towards acquiring a two-thirds majority in Parliament. It would allow it to pass the Constitutional amendment Bill seeking to advance the reservation of 33% seats for women in an expanded Lok Sabha and state Assemblies and facilitate delimitation of constituencies.
The BJP sees women’s support and delimitation as critical to its efforts to retain power in 2029. It saw the advantage that the redrawing of constituencies gave it in the recent elections in Assam. So, it lost no time in going for the kill as soon as the TMC was routed in Bengal, as well as in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, to shore up its numbers in Parliament.
From all accounts, it is reworking the delimitation Bill to address some of the reservations of the DMK. Using both the carrot and the stick, the BJP would like to bring the DMK’s 22 Lok Sabha MPs on board. Many feel that the DMK — already miffed with the Congress for dumping it and siding with actor Vijay’s TVK — may agree to go along with the “reworked” Delimitation Bill, either by abstaining or providing issue-based support to the ruling party. If that happens. the BJP will have lined up an additional 48 Lok Sabha MPs — 20 TMC rebels, 22 from the DMK, six from the Shiv Sena (UBT) who are all set to join the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena — to the NDA tally of 293 and will be just 19 short of the two-thirds mark of 360 (the current strength of the Lok Sabha is 540).
Dominance of ‘careerists’
While the BJP knows what it is about, it is important to look at the reasons why parties such as the TMC and the Sena (UBT) are suddenly coming apart at the seams.
Some of these so-called rebels may fear action by the Indian “ICE”: Income Tax, CBI, and Enforcement Directorate. Yet, others know they may not get elected in 2029 on their parent party’s ticket and there are reports that the BJP has assured them tickets in 2029. And yet others feel — and the rebel Sena (UBT) MPs have expressed this openly — they will get funds for the development of their constituencies if they side with the ruling party. Most importantly, many feel it is going to be a long haul for the Opposition and that it is better to be on the BJP’s side, given its near-invincible position today.
While the older politicians cut their teeth in politics through student movements and espousing social causes, the younger breed in the TMC, for instance, is made up of careerists. Yesterday, it was a good career move to join the TMC; today, it makes more sense to support the NDA. Many of the under-50s have seen the TMC in power and may not have an appetite for a role in the Opposition. “Today, it takes courage just to be in the Opposition,” an Opposition leader said stoically.
Recent events have changed the idea of what constitutes a mandate in Indian democracy. The “aaya Ram, gaya Ram” phenomenon — a Hindi phrase that was coined to refer to serial turncoats in the late 1960s — is not new. In 1980, when Indira Gandhi returned to power, Haryana CM Bhajan Lal, who headed a Janata Party government, shifted the entire Legislature Party to the Congress and became a Congress CM overnight.
A new legitimacy is now being frequently granted to the acquisition of a majority by breaking parties. Forget the moral compasses that existed in the years gone by; gone also are the fig leaves that once existed.
The ‘Abhishek phenomenon’
Recent events have shown that the regional parties may well be running out of steam. They, along with the BJP, had come to occupy some of the space vacated by a Congress in decline and it spawned a coalition era from 1990 onwards.
The state satraps who built their empires — be it Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Mamata, K Chandrashekar Rao, H D Deve Gowda, or M K Stalin (though the Dravidian parties have been better anchored ideologically) — passed on the baton to a member of their family rather than to a trusted colleague. With big money involved, a leader tends to trust a son, a daughter, or a wife more than a colleague. Leaders also feel the need for emotional support, for the top is a lonely place and the higher you go the lonelier it gets.
But now a reaction seems to be setting in, maybe not against the dynastic principle, but against how dynasts function. That can be summed up as the “Abhishek phenomenon”.
There had obviously been a simmering discontent in the TMC against the leadership of Mamata’s nephew and heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee, who had been given unfettered control of the party. The BJP was able to fish in the TMC’s troubled waters because of the intensity of that sentiment, which Mamata was not able to either gauge and defuse, or chose to ignore.
The recent spate of splits comes as a warning to other parties — to reflect and course correct.
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide.)
It is the speed with which the parties are unravelling and the scale on which the splits are taking place that have taken many by surprise. 
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