Delhi, the governance capital of the country, has been trapped in controversial pulls and pushes at different historical moments. The intensity of embroilment has peaked every time the Union government has stood in formidable opposition to the NCT-Delhi government, calibrating the cooperative federal structure envisioned by the founding fathers of the constitution. The crisis that precipitates from such contrariety is a display of the naked egoistic inter-party bickering that ramshackle the quality of public life. With the additive rise of one-party saffron hegemony since 2014, any interruption in power consolidation has been met with unleashing of targeted controls over the opposition. In the Platonian sense, the virtue-based eudemonistic conception of politics for ‘good life’ is rejected to favour the possibilities of the Machiavellian framework of coercion creating legality.
The power tussle between Delhi and the Union government has never been as acute as now. The fundamental antagonism arises from the contemporaneous ascendancy of the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). For the first time, the BJP has experienced a deluge of acceptability as a popular majoritarian government after the 11th Lok Sabha general elections, while AAP too gained electoral majorities in Delhi and Punjab within a decade of its existence. Emanating from the anti-corruption movement, the transfer of power was not a cakewalk for AAP. In fact, the upping of ante against the Centre has caused bleeding sores between the Lieutenant Governor and the chief minister. The only reaping advantage of the situation is the deconstruction of the image of Arvind Kejriwal as a single-state miracle to a national leader, positioning him as one of the contenders to Prime Minister Narender Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In the run to the 2024 general elections, the BJP has been partially malevolent to the opposition. From scathing criticism of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra to ordering probes into alleged corruption by opposition leaders, the BJP is focused on decimating any likelihood of alternative leadership. Many opposition leaders have been summoned by central investigative agencies, including Arvind Kejriwal and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee, in relation to alleged misgovernance, misappropriation and scams. Some have also been jailed; prominent among them are AAP’s Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia and health minister Satyendra Jain. The fear of persecution has fostered the steady defection of many to the BJP, reducing the national presence of regional actors. The evolving single-eyed strategy is centred around the fragmentation of any opposition unity to preserve the majoritarian supremacy of the BJP in parliament. This hierarchical structure of “subordination and rule” is similar to one on which monarchic vivere sicuro (live securely) rests.
The active interference of the BJP via the LG in routine Delhi governance has questioned the intent of many public projects, leading to everyday squabbles. Such deadlocks have not deterred AAP from venturing into geographical expansion for presence in different pockets of the country. Striding on its national ambition, the electorally motivated AAP strategised to fight elections in the saffron headquarters, Gujarat, and also in Goa. The party won five maiden seats with a vote share of 12.92% in the Gujarat assembly elections and a 6.8.% vote share with two seats in the Goa assembly elections. Gradually, achieving the status of a national party has only steered it towards boisterous long-term populist campaigns against the BJP. Some of them are personal attacks on the BJP’s top-rung leadership while others are framed in the form of a choice between two contradictory governance models. The new public sphere of social media has seen a plethora of anecdotes challenging the credibility of the PM. It has sharpened the digital warfare between the ruling dispensation and the opposition parties aiming to gain popularity to set the election mood of the country.
The key to any effective opposition coalition rests on a shared set of goals rather than ideological affirmations. A grand alliance that is solely unidirectional in its objective to defeat the BJP is possible when different regional actors forgo their personal interest in power. The discernible danger lies in the unequal seat-sharing between national parties and regional parties in any asymmetrical conglomerative arrangement. Any dividend gained by the Congress and its allies in the Bharat Jodo Yatra, reflected in the impending state assembly elections, will push for political configurations that undermine regional actors. Any anti-Congress third front will survive only when regional parties design a blueprint of winnability, annihilating differences and equalising relationships of power.
The idea for the opposition is to evolve a nuanced strategy of reverse ‘Matsya-Nyaya’, the law of bigger fish swallowing the smaller fishes. In reverse, the smaller fish can mobilise for aggregation to save themselves from the bigger fish. Thereby, the opposition has the task of forgoing their particularistic ambitions for the larger good of arresting the weevil-like decay of the democratic structures. When the question is the continuity and endurance of the constitutionally premised political system, political parties have to overcome the risk of democratic malfeasance. The in-built mechanism of resilience has to be re-initiated to reject any structural reframing by majoritarianism.
Anita Tagore is associate professor, Kalindi College, University of Delhi. She is also a lawyer and socio-legal researcher.
