Will TMC, NCP merge back into Congress? Sharad Pawar’s idea finds new life as Opposition shrinks

The interview gained traction, coming as it did from Pawar, who is not given to speaking off the cuff. His words are measured and his timing carefully chosen — and were clearly meant to be a trial balloon to assess the Congress’s reaction. With the NCP having split a year earlier and the larger group gravitating to his (now deceased) nephew Ajit Pawar, the senior Pawar may have hoped to retrieve the situation in the polls due in the state and also explore the possibility of a larger national role.

Several months later, I asked someone who had spoken to Pawar about what had come of the idea he had floated. The answer was short: there was no response from the Congress.

The Congress chose not to build on the momentum its 99 Lok Sabha seats generated. This might have happened had it reached out to Pawar and, through him, to other regional satraps for closer coordination. Would that have altered the outcomes in Haryana, Maharashtra, and the Delhi Assembly polls which gave the BJP a new lease of life? The Congress leadership obviously could not overcome its long-held wariness of Pawar, who first broke away from the party in 1978 — later to rejoin it in 1986 — and then again in 1999 on Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins to float the NCP.

And now, exactly two years later, Pawar’s prediction has received a fresh lease of life. The regional parties are a weakened lot and the BJP is expanding its footprint rapidly. In a newfound assertiveness, the ruling party is going all out to acquire a two-thirds majority in Parliament by encouraging splits in Opposition parties.

The once-invincible Mamata Banerjee was not only defeated in West Bengal, but her party is unravelling with a stunning rapidity, with two-thirds of her MLAs and Lok Sabha MPs having moved away from her. The rebel group of 20 MPs that merged with a little-known party called NCPI ostensibly to avoid the axe of the anti-defection law falling on them has stated categorically that it will now be supporting the BJP-led NDA.

In the west, the Shiv Sena (UBT) is suddenly battling speculation of another split. Five of its nine Lok Sabha MPs did not show up for a meeting convened by Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday. There has been a restiveness in the NCP (SP) as several of its eight Lok Sabha MPs were hoping to reunite with Ajit Pawar’s NCP, but Ajit dada’s death in an aircrash earlier this year stayed that process.

The BJP, which wants to push through the legislation on delimitation and operationalise the Women’s Reservation Act, has reached out to the DMK that is miffed with the Congress for joining hands with actor Vijay’s TVK. There are indications that the BJP is holding quiet consultations with the DMK leadership and reworking the delimitation Bills to bring around the Dravidian party, which has 22 Lok Sabha MPs.

Concerned about these developments, the Congress on June 8 convened a meeting of the INDIA bloc after two years. Though Mamata had been cool to the idea of the Opposition alliance, this time she was seen warmly embracing Sonia Gandhi.

Then suddenly there was a buzz that Mamata and Pawar might merge their now-truncated parties with the Congress. Though the Congress and TMC spokespersons denied the reports, former Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot spoke of the need for a “ghar wapsi” by all those who were once a part of the Congress. Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Sanjay Raut, considered close to Pawar, spoke in a similar vein. Pawar’s nephew and NCP leader Rohit Pawar did not rule it out, saying a merger “is definitely possible at the right time”.

Questions remain

Attractive though the idea is — and a “ghar wapsi” will create its own psychological impact — how feasible is it? And how workable will it be for the prodigal sons and daughters who left home to chart out their own course to return home and be welcomed with open arms? For it is always easier to break (leave a party), but that much more difficult to mend (return to the fold) and forget the old grievances and humiliations.

Can Mamata or Pawar report to Rahul Gandhi? Technically speaking, they will work under the party president, the more senior Mallikarjun Kharge. Will they be given a free hand in their respective states? More importantly, how will their workers who have exchanged vitriolic attacks against each other in recent years accept each other readily?

Apart from Mamata, who broke away from the Congress in 1998, and Pawar, who split the following year, in Andhra Pradesh, there is Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress which parted company with the Congress in 2010 after the death of his father and CM of united Andhra Pradesh Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. Also, there are sections of one Janata Dal or another that share the Congress DNA. This is not the case with the Shiv Sena, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Samajwadi Party, or the Rashtriya Janata Dal; the politics of the last two groups having been shaped more by the socialists of yesteryears.

Merger or not, it may be easier to forge a “closer association” between the regional parties and the Congress that Pawar spoke of in Satara, looking at a seat-by-seat alliance. Whether Mamata goes back to the Congress will depend on whether, and how quickly, she starts to evoke sympathy at the popular level for the way she has been treated by her party colleagues at her lowest moment. And if and how she can turn it to her advantage.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide.)