Leaders from various political parties join two anti-BJP gatherings in South India

Over the course of two months, leaders from various political parties descended south to join two anti-BJP gatherings, with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. However, the central characters differed a lot.

While Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has made his national ambitions abundantly clear, even renaming his party to aid the process, his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin insists he is already in the national scene and used his birthday rally on March 1 to not only strongly pitch the Congress as a force to reckon with in the efforts to remove the Narendra Modi-led dispensation at the Centre, but also sought to shoot down the prospect of a Third Front.

Rao and Stalin have proven to be regional satraps capable of dealing with the BJP’s might, and both were recently seen in the company of top national leaders.

If the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), the erstwhile Telangana Rashtra Samiti, meeting in Khammam on January 18 saw a clear call for a regime change in New Delhi next year, the Chennai rally to mark Stalin’s 70th birthday emphasised opposition unity.

While the BRS-led meeting was adamant about the need for a change of government at the Centre, speakers at the Chennai event emphasised the common thread of a socialist vision that unites them, while leaders such as Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah batted for Stalin to take up a bigger national role.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge stated that his party and the DMK shared a common social vision. It is anyone’s guess that the parties are hoping to garner a large harvest from the 40 parliamentary seats up for grabs in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. In 2004, the alliance won all 40 under then-DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s leadership, giving the UPA-I the much-needed numbers to form a government under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Political analyst Ramu Suravajjula said the January meeting in Khammam organised by KCR, as Rao is popularly known, was seen as the Telangana Chief Minister’s mega show of strength projecting his national ambitions. However, his political dilemma was on display at the public meeting, Suravajjula opined.

KCR did not outline the BRS agenda, nor did he make any mention of his national political allies.

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The visiting leaders, who included Kerala and Delhi Chief Ministers Pinarayi Vijayan and Arvind Kejriwal, respectively, as well as CPI top leader D Raja, did not declare KCR as their leader, he said.

An observer of Tamil Nadu politics suggested that a Third Front might not have the desired impact and pointed out at the ambitious ‘Makkal Nala Kootani’ (People’s Welfare Front), headed by actor-politician Vijayakant’s DMDK, coming a cropper in 2016 Assembly polls in that state, even as the AIADMK secured a rare successive term in a close fight involving the DMK. The DMDK-led alliance included MDMK and the two Left parties, who are now part of the DMK-led bloc.

Suravajjula stated that Stalin demonstrated political pragmatism during his birthday celebrations in Chennai.

KCR was alienated in his fight against the BJP, with Kharge and Stalin sending a clear message that no coalition meant to effectively oppose the BJP can succeed without the Congress, he said.

Some argue that the Rao-led meeting focused primarily on dethroning the BJP-led Central government, whereas the participants in Chennai made a concerted effort to brand the bloc as pro-social justice and ideologically oriented.

According to Chennai-based political observer Sathyalaya Ramakrishnan, both groups wanted to see the back of Modi in 2024 but were confused on who should lead.

“There is lot of confusion among the opposition parties on who should lead an alliance. These kinds of confusions and non-cooperation will lead Modi to form his own government for the third time next year,” he said.

Ramakrishnan stated that even after the Khammam meeting, national leaders were not interested in projecting KCR as a PM candidate, and that Abdullah had even supported the “Stalin for PM” slogan, which was popular in Tamil Nadu and among supporters of the DMK leader.

Another political analyst, Telakapalli Ravi, stated that Congress was the major contrast between the two meetings.

While the grand old party is a rival of the BRS in Telangana, Stalin gave a respectable place to Congress by inviting it to his birthday celebrations in Chennai, he said.