The winning streak of a united Opposition continued in the bypolls. Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, which has an18-19 per cent Muslim population, returned its first Muslim MP to the present Lok Sabha with Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Tabassum Hasan winning by an impressive margin of over 44,000 votes.

The BJP clearly has little to celebrate after the recent bypolls, which were held in four Lok Sabha seats and 11 Assembly constituencies. Most glaring was its candidate’s defeat in Kairana, which has been a hotbed of communal polarisation in recent times. The RLD candidate was able to romp home comfortably with the party being backed by major regional players such as the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party as well as the Congress. The BJP’s vote share in Kairana fell from 50.6 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls to 45.7 per cent, while the RLD candidate polled 52 per cent of the votes.

Cheer for UP’s Muslims

For UP’s Muslims, who had got a big jolt in both the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 UP Assembly polls with the BJP scoring huge victories, the recent bypolls are really a moment to celebrate. From the Noorpur Assembly seat, Samajwadi Party candidate Naimul Hasan won, defeating Avani Singh, wife of Lokendar Singh, the BJP MLA whose death in a road accident led to this bypoll. These two victories should dent the perception that Muslim votes can be rendered irrelevant if the majority community decides to vote for the BJP.

In Maharashtra, of course, the saffron party got some solace with its candidate trouncing the friend-turned-foe Shiv Sena in the Palghar seat. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray’s bitter reaction and tongue lashing to the BJP, particularly after this defeat, lays even more open the possibility of Shiv Sena parting ways with the BJP well before the 2019 polls. The two are allies in the Maharashtra government.

Gondia, the other Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra, went to the NCP by a narrow margin. In Karnataka the Congress increased its tally by one and in Meghalaya it became the single largest party after winning the Ampani Assembly seat. In Punjab, with one more seat in its kitty, the Congress now has two-thirds majority. Lalu Yadav’s RJD has retained the Jokihat seat in Bihar, proving that Nitish Kumar’s U-turn and joining the BJP had not dented the Lalu-Tejashwi hold on the electorate.

With the grand old party inching its way, slowly but surely, back into the electorate’s favour, the writing on the 2019 electoral wall is becoming absolutely clear: only a united Opposition has a chance of coming anywhere near the BJP juggernaut. And if they do manage to hold together, the biggest beneficiary will be BSP’s Mayawati, whose party was trounced in the 2014 General Elections, leaving it without a single Lok Sabha seat. With party’s votes transferring to the SP in Gorakhpur and Phulpur earlier, and now to the RLD in Kairana, and ensuring their candidates’ victory, she is back in business.

Grand alliance?

Add to this Mamata’s TMC, Lalu’s RJD, the JD(S) in Karnataka, which has already announced an alliance with the Congress for the next Lok Sabha polls, one of the two Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu, Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP in Andhra Pradesh, Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, possibly Navin Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, (and who knows when Nitish Kumar might jump ship again) and you have a formidable Front under the Congress umbrella.

The challenge of course will be to keep these disparate elements together. Each of these leaders will flex their muscles, emboldened by Congress’s weak position post-2014, and demand a substantial slice in the Opposition pie. How many seats the Congress is willing to give away will decide the fate of the anti-NDA front.

If the Congress has learnt anything at all from its humiliating and abject defeat in 2014, it should not shy away from parting with seats. Without openly aspiring for the PM’s position in case such a Front does manage to get a majority, the Congress leadership should concentrate on forming a strong anti-NDA alliance. Whether they like it or not, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged such a formidable contender for leading another NDA term in office, that the Opposition would do well to leave blank the face of its prime ministerial candidate. If it comes anywhere near a shouting distance of power, the games will then begin. So be it.

The BJP’s slogan of course will be for stability and one more chance for vikas . But this time around, with a dismal four-year report card on any front that you can name — job creation, improved economy, communal amity, women’s safety, bank scams, a crushing rise in oil prices which have a cascading effect on price rise — Modi’s rhetoric, however well articulated, is bound to ring hollow.

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