Ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, there has been one particular narrative that has been doing the rounds among the pseudo secular and pseudo-liberal political outfits and political circles within the country. The narrative is that all the “secular” parties must come together in order to defeat a “communal” BJP. Therefore, leaders who survive only on the basis of blatant appeasement of one or two communities have started preaching about secularism in a naive attempt to corner the BJP.
The anti-BJP elements and news traders have been arguing that consolidation of anti-BJP votes instead of their division in a multi-cornered contest is the only way of bringing down the BJP. A grand alliance is being seen as a sure shot formula to defeat the BJP and Prime Minister Modi. However, this is a highly misleading narrative. The fact remains that political forces opposed to the BJP had tried coming together in the past as well but failed miserably.
Former SP supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav had admitted in an interview to Prabhu Chawla that the Samajwadi Party indeed helped Rahul Gandhi in winning from Amethi in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Rahul Gandhi had won by 1.07 lakh votes. The SP had not fielded candidates against Rahul Gandhi (Amethi) and Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli), and the Congress had not fielded any candidate against Dimple Yadav (Kannauj). It is clear that had the SP fielded a candidate from Amethi, Rahul Gandhi would have been in a spot of bother because a number of votes would that went to him would have gone to the SP candidate, as both the parties have a similar vote bank.
The fact that the SP had helped the inheritor of the grand old party does not even need any corroboration, it is crystal clear that the SP had helped Rahul Gandhi by not fielding a candidate against him. The fact that Mulayam Singh Yadav has admitted this only shows that there was some kind of understanding between the Congress and the SP at that time.
What is important to mention here is the fact that in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the then Uttar Pradesh mining minister, Gayatri Prasad Prajapati had said, “To ensure BJP’s defeat in Amethi, SP has decided to support Rahul Gandhi here.” The SP leader had added, “in order to check communal forces spreading tentacles in the country, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav has not fielded candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli.”
Thus, even before Mulayam Singh Yadav admitted this, it was common knowledge that SP had helped Rahul Gandhi in 2014. This implies that the two parties had some kind of understanding. However, we all know how things had unfolded at that time. BJP won 73 seats in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Even though there was not a formal grand coalition but it is clear that the SP and the Congress were not totally out of sync. However, the two parties were not able to withstand the Modi wave at that time. This demolishes the entire premise around which it is being largely predicted that the grand coalition will be able to defeat the BJP. It must also be kept in mind that the SP and Congress had again come together during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly elections but the coalition failed to stop BJP’s victory.
This conclusively proves that the grand coalition is clearly overrated and when there is a political wave going strongly in favour of the BJP, the grand coalition won’t stand a chance against the BJP.