Will electoral alliances work this time? Here is an analysis

The year was 1996 and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) cofounder Kanshi Ram was scouting for an ally for the assembly polls to expand the party’s base in Uttar Pradesh (UP). BSP had severed ties with the BJP over power sharing differences in 1995. With the 1993 guest house incident — when SP men attacked Mayawati after she pulled out support from the government — allying with Mulayam Singh was not an option. After several rounds of talks with PV Narasimha Rao of the Congress, a deal was struck. The Congress would contest 115 seats and the BSP 310 seats in the then 425-seat assembly. When the votes were counted, the party was left dumbstruck — the alliance won in just 100 seats.

“The Congress does not have the capability of transferring its votes to any party. We will not have prepoll alliances with any party hereon,” Kanshi Ram had told his party workers after the results. His protégé Mayawati lived by this policy until recently. Now of course the unthinkable has happened and Mayawati has joined hands with Akhilesh Yadav’s SP to defend their political fiefdom against the BJP.



“Today, BSP is the only party that can claim to transfer all its votes to its allies. For others the proportionality may differ widely,” said psephologist Yashwant Deshmukh. The SP-BSP alliance in UP is just the most important one among a number of alliances this election season.



In states such as Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and elsewhere, alliances are seen to play an important role and parties are still busy putting final touches to them. Like all partnerships, Indian polls witness many kinds of alliances — foes-turned -friends, opportunistic alliances, seasonal alliances, long-suffering alliances and much else. The best kinds are where there’s political chemistry between alliance partners and also sound underlying electoral arithmetic—where the whole becomes larger than the sum of the parts. But those are rare.



Alliances are frequently messy. An alliance can weaken a party’s sway in a region, one partner can gain more than the other, and an alliance between leaders don’t necessarily mean the cadres on the ground can get along with each other, obliterating local rivalries. Sometimes voters totally reject an alliance, reducing the votes the two partners might otherwise have garnered. This election will also likely see all these dynamics playing out.

Yadav-Jatav Factor
The SP-BSP alliance is perhaps among the trickiest ones to have been forged in this country. With OBCs (Other Backward Classes) still seeing Dalits as rivals post 1993, it’s as yet unclear if the SP voter will return the BSP’s favour. The 2018 Lok Sabha bypolls in erstwhile BJP bastions Gorakhpur and Phulpur (both had SP candidates) were the first test of SP-BSP unity. SP won both the seats with BSP’s backing.



Observers of UP s political dynamics say Yadavs, a politically savvy community, may not reciprocate to the same degree as BSP’s loyal voters. Shivpal Yadav’s breakaway party could also play spoilsport in some seats.

“On many seats, Yadav voters would rather vote for Shivpal or the BJP than Mayawati’s candidates,” says an SP insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Nonetheless, the poll arithmetic is in their favour, unlike the 2017 SP-Congress assembly election alliance that failed badly, decimating the ruling SP. In the same elections, SP and BSP had together polled similar vote share (42.12%) as had the BJP (42.63%).



It is this arithmetic the regional parties are banking on. The Mahagatbandhan in Bihar’s 2015 assembly polls was the original model for longstanding local rivals joining hands to keep out an ascendant BJP. On his visit to Bihar, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat made a statement implying that there needs to be a review of caste-based reservations.

Bitter rivals Lalu Prasad (Rashtriya Janata Dal) and Nitish Kumar ( Janata Dal United) lost no time to join hands with the Congress and take on the BJP together. Together they polled 35.2% votes against rival BJP’s 24.4% votes. Vote transfer among enemies-turned-friends was seamless.

“Bihar Mahagatbandhan was the demand of the people. RJD got JDU votes; so did JDU. When people want leaders to come together, there’s no hitch in vote transfer. It’s only when alliance happen among top leaders, votes do not get transferred,” RJD spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha said.



With Nitish leaving the RJD to join old ally BJP in 2017, and the two fighting the Lok Sabha polls together in 2019, the BJP is likely to gain more from JDU than vice versa. The BJP owes much of its post-Mandal gains in Bihar to Nitish Kumar. It could expand in the state only after he joined hands with the BJP in 1995. An alliance with the BJP, which is facing some anger from the OBCs due to the 10% reservation for the general category the Central government recently brought in, might place Nitish Kumar at a disadvantage in the state.

“Vote transfer will happen both ways as JDU is a natural ally of the BJP. Together, we will definitely win more seats,” said Bhupendra Yadav, BJP’s Bihar in-charge. Opposition RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav is trying to turn the discontent among OBCs in his favour by talking about “Jiski jitni aabadi uska utna aarakshan (Reservation proportionate to population)”. OBCs account for half of the state’s population with both Nitish and Tejashwi belonging to the community.

The situation in India’s newest state—Telangana— is somewhat similar to UP. When ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) legislators led by their chief K Chandrashekhar Rao dissolved the assembly on September 6, 2018, uncertainty lurked. Snap elections were imminent.



Congress joined hands with Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, formed by his father-in-law NT Rama Rao with the express mandate to end Congress rule in the state. With Communist Party of India and newly-minted Telangana Jana Samithi in the mix, Prajakutami (people’s alliance) was born. Observers expected Prajakutami to sound the death knell for TRS.

Math versus Chemistry
The electoral arithmetic was in their favour. In the 2014 assembly polls (held along with Sabha elections), Congress and TDP had polled 25% and 15% votes, respectively. This collective 40% vote share would trump TRS’ 34%, the argument went. But the four opposition parties could win only 21 seats of the 119 seats between themselves (Congress 19 and TDP two) in the 2018 polls.



Many feel Congress tying up with TDP, which had opposed Telangana formation, worked against it. Instead of helping the Congress, it revived the Telangana sentiment, driving hardcore Telangana voters in droves towards the TRS, even if they had been getting restive with the party lately.

“Tying up with TDP was a blunder for the Congress. People of Telangana did not like it as Naidu was seen to be opposing the creation of the state,” says political analyst MEV Prasad Reddy. Clearly, core Congress votes did not get transferred to the TDP and vice versa.

“The party with more loyal votes will be able to transfer votes more effectively,” says Sanjay Kumar, director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). “Besides, there has to be a motivation,” adds Deshmukh of CVoter. The motivation in this case was to vote for a party that stands for Telangana.

Allying with dominant players doesn’t always guarantee seamless vote transfer. Congress fought the 2014 Lok Sabha polls alone in Tamil Nadu and secured 4.3% votes. In the 2016 assembly polls, it allied with the DMK and ended up with 6% votes.

“This shows DMK-Congress are not natural allies, though this time, with DMK leader Stalin declaring Rahul as PM candidate, they are hoping for greater synergy,” feels Maalan V Narayanan, a Chennai-based senior journalist.

In its bid to woo Tamil voters, BJP has tied up with AIADMK as well as smaller allies PMK and DMDK. “While AIADMK votes easily get transferred to its allies, for others it is not that smooth. Among smaller parties, too, the transfer isn’t smooth,” feels Narayanan.



In Maharashtra, while Shiv Sena did not miss any opportunity to attack the BJP in the last four years, last month the two parties decided to fight the national and assembly elections jointly. Psephlogists feel BJP voters will back Shiv Sena to make Modi the PM and Shiv Sena supporters will vote for BJP to stop the Congress.

“No party can win an absolute majority on its own in the prevailing condition in the country, which is why the BJP has to join hands with other parties in every state,” Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut said. Some add a note of caution.

“There has been a lot of heartburn between the two sides. I doubt the vote transferability will be as smooth as 2014,” says CSDS’ Kumar. Maharashtra’s and bellwether UP’s case isn’t very different from Assam where BJP’s ally from 2016 assembly polls, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), may be back in NDA fold after splitting over Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), but the party cadre still have ideological differences.

Without the differences, with AGP by its side, the BJP could have consolidated the anti-Congress votes like it did in the 2016 assembly polls. Fighting together, the BJP and the AGP won 60 and 14 seats, respectively, in the 126-member assembly.

“But this time the vote transfer will not be automatic as there has been a lot of resentment against BJP’s CAB among AGP ranks who feel BJP unilaterally moved ahead with the bill. Even Himanta Biswa Sarma has expressed his fears about vote transferability this time as at the grassroots and booth level, it will not be very easy to convince core Assamese voters to vote for BJP. Till sometime back leaders from both parties were spewing venom, now they want to campaign together. It won’t be easy,” says Tezpur Central University professor of sociology Chandan Sharma.

Mayawati and Akhilesh — bitter rivals from the past who would now be holding 11 rallies together — would know something about these difficulties.