KCR has even changed the name of his party to pursue his national ambitions.
NEW DELHI: The ground is not yet ready for the next Lok Sabha elections, but the regional parties with high aspirations have started seeing prime ministerial dreams in the quagmire of alliances. Interesting is the case of the very ambitious Chandra Shekhar Rao of Telangana, who decided to change the name of his party from Telangana Rashtra Samithi to Bharat Rashtra Samithi and is applying for recognition from the Election Commission to make his mark at the national level.
Rao had formed the Telangana Rashtra Samithi party after staying in the Congress and Telugu Desam parties for decades and later agitating on the streets in the name of protecting the interests of Telangana. On the strength of this strategy, his party has been winning the Legislative Assembly elections till now. While in power, Rao has been involved in many controversies and is now facing more political challenges. But for the last few months, he has campaigned to become an alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party by mobilising the opposition. In fact, after H.D. Deve Gowda once came to power, the leaders of regional parties and chief ministers started dreaming of becoming the Prime Minister themselves. That is why the supporters of Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, and even Arvind Kejriwal are openly declaring them as alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, though none of them have any influence outside their state.
There is no doubt that regional parties emerged in Indian politics when national political parties ignored regional interests and satraps. Before 1967, only the Akali Dal (that is, the “Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee”, formed in 1920 for the rights of the Sikhs) was a political stream. Similarly, “Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam” (D.M.K) was established in 1949 by C.N. Annadurai to protect the interests of the Dravidian caste-society. After a division in 1972, famous film actor M.G. Ramachandran formed a party named “Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam” but in other parts of the country, no regional party emerged until 1967. Congress was the most influential party. The Socialists, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha, Swatantra Party, and Communist parties continued to play the role of opposition on an ideological basis. When the Congress started weakening, Chaudhary Charan Singh, who influenced the farmers and the backward sections of society, left the Congress and formed the “Bharatiya Kranti Dal” in Uttar Pradesh. It can be called revolutionary because, with it, the emergence of non-Congress and leaders and parties based on regional and caste began to arise in North-South and East-West states too. Today, many forms and constituents of the Janata Dal are visible in different leaders. They are like the successors of Chaudhary Charan Singh and socialist leaders.
In South India, N.T. Rama Rao created a major alternative on a regional basis by forming the “Telugu Desam Party”. The movement of Telangana for its separate identity shook the Congress government at the Centre. In the seventies, a veteran leader like Narasimha Rao was forced to resign as Chief Minister. Even after becoming Prime Minister, he did not accept the demand for a separate Telangana state, but on the strength of the Congress and Telugu Desam Party, making dominance into the Legislative Assembly, Chandrashekhar Rao intensified the movement in 2001 by forming a party in the name of “Telangana Rashtra Samithi”. Finally, before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Manmohan Singh’s government accepted the Congress’ demand for a separate Telangana state with the hope of political gains and also approved it by the Parliament. Chandrashekhar Rao became the patriarch of Telangana and became the Chief Minister with a huge victory for the party. In the 2018 Legislative Assembly elections, for the second time in the new state, Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi won nearly seventy percent of the 119 seats, i.e., 88 seats. In addition to the construction of a new capital, temple construction, making his office bullet proof, allegations of corruption and giving maximum benefits of power to his family have increased his problems.
The Congress is still weak, but the Bharatiya Janata Party has increased its influence over the years. Instead of negotiating with the BJP or Congress, Rao has set out to run for power at the Centre. But his situation and problems are still not resolved. Chandrashekhar Rao is not alone. Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (U) has become weak in Bihar. But Nitish seems desperate for any compromise to become Prime Minister by breaking all the records of Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, and Deve Gowda. In 1990, he formed a coalition government with Janata Dal and Lalu Prasad Yadav. Then they took political advantage with George Fernandez, Sharad Yadav, and Deve Gowda. Then he joined the BJP, then joined with Lalu, and left; apart from other small parties in the election, did not hesitate to join hands with Congress, Nationalist Congress, “Indian National Lok Dal”, and “Hindustani Awam Morcha”. Mamata Banerjee is in favour of opposition unity, but she is in no mood to accept Rahul Gandhi or Nitish. Sharad Pawar wants support from Congress, but does not want to give more shares to Congress in Maharashtra.
Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party cannot compromise with the BJP at all, but it also cannot benefit from the Congress, BSP, or Janata Dal (U).
In this way, when most of the regional parties will have to compete with the Congress in their states, then how much will they be able to benefit from the talk of verbal agreements and alliances? The first challenge is whether the BJP and its allies will be able to get the number of seats claimed in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. And if something like this happens, will the opposition be able to easily get a consensus on a regional leader? If someone is given the helm in the quagmire of the coalition, then his condition will not be like that of former prime ministers like Charan Singh or Chandrashekhar. How much damage will this swamp and this staggering boat cause to democracy and the country?
The author is the editorial director of ITV Network-India News and Dainik Aaj Samaj.