Over four years in opposition, Congress and NCP have moved from being reluctant allies to joining hands again ahead of Lok Sabha & Maharashtra polls next year.
Mumbai: In November 2014, leaders of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) took their place in the opposition benches of the Maharashtra legislature for the first time in 15 years.
For several months, they battled sharp criticism for not being able to settle into their new role and put up a formidable opposition to the relatively-inexperienced Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government.
As the Devendra Fadnavis-led government completes four years, the NCP and the Congress seem to have come to terms with their role as the opposition, and appear more united and aggressive than those early days.
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There is, however, a certain amount of scepticism over whether the opposition’s slowly brewing aggression will result in any electoral gains.
Graft cases against senior opposition leaders
Several leaders of the state’s erstwhile Congress-NCP government have grappled with corruption allegations, which, some experts say, muted the opposition’s aggressiveness.
Ashok Chavan, now the Maharashtra Congress president, had to resign as chief minister in 2010 for allegedly approving an additional construction area for the Adarsh Housing Society in Mumbai in exchange for two flats for relatives.
Last year, the Bombay High Court set aside Maharashtra Governor C. Vidyasagar Rao’s sanction to the CBI to prosecute Chavan in the case, and the matter is now in the Supreme Court.
Similarly, NCP leaders Ajit Pawar and Sunil Tatkare, both former ministers, have been under the scanner for an alleged multi-crore irrigation scam in Maharashtra during the erstwhile Congress-NCP administration. The case pertains to alleged irregularities in the grant of contracts for irrigation projects meant for the state’s drought-prone areas.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said recently that “strong chargesheets” had been filed in the irrigation scam and that the matter will soon reach a definitive stage.
In 2016, the opposition had alleged political vendetta when NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal was arrested in a case of alleged money laundering. Bhujbal walked out on bail earlier this year after spending two years behind bars.
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“The opposition in Maharashtra has been a complete failure,” said political analyst Prakash Bal. “The only reason the BJP has made sweeping electoral gains in local polls across the state since 2014 is because the opposition has not been able to effectively address the rural discontent against the government.
“Among many leaders of the opposition, there is a fear that the government will viciously pursue old corruption cases against them,” he added. “For example, the Congress’ Ashok Chavan constantly seems wary about the Adarsh housing scam case. Just the other day, Fadnavis also spoke about the irrigation scam during a media interview, saying even the former ministers involved in it will not be spared.”
However, political commentator Pratap Asbe said that, with the Lok Sabha elections just six months away, these opposition leaders will not hold back. “There was a fear among opposition leaders earlier, but it will not impact their performance much now,” he said.
“The government did not act when it had the time and any action now will only boomerang on it,” Asbe added. “For example, if Ajit Pawar is arrested now, it will look like a political arrest ahead of elections. If the opposition retaliates strongly, it will further put the BJP in a spot.”
Opposition unity firming up
The Congress and the NCP’s stint in opposition started on a note of mutual distrust. The longtime allies had just contested the assembly election as rivals, and the NCP, which won 41 of the state’s 288 seats (one less than the Congress) had even offered outside support to the BJP, which fell short of the halfway mark with 122 seats.
Inside the legislature, floor coordination between the two estranged allies was weak initially, with Congress leaders often raising questions about whether the NCP was covertly working with the BJP on certain issues.
In March 2015, the NCP even joined hands with the BJP to oust Shivajirao Deshmukh of the Congress as the legislative council chairman by supporting a no-confidence motion against him. The NCP’s Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar was subsequently elected to the post.
However, over the last one year, the Congress and the NCP have been warming up to each other once again and have agreed to get back together. In an interview earlier this year, NCP chief Sharad Pawar infused fresh enthusiasm in reconciliation talks by calling the Congress the only alternative to the BJP.
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In the national political arena, too, the Congress leadership and the NCP chief have been trying to hammer out a grand coalition of all opposition parties to put up a united front against the BJP-led union government.
After initial bonhomie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pawar, 77, who shares a cordial relationship with most regional parties, has been trying to play the role of a liaison.
“Both parties have, down the line, realised that we have to together carry forward the agenda of making Maharashtra regain its old glory,” said All India Congress Committee secretary Sanjay Dutt.
“From the Congress’ side, there was always an effort to carry the NCP along with us,” he added. “Last year, all opposition parties also staged a rally together to highlight the failures of the government.
“Yes, there were some incidents where an impression was created that opposition parties are not united,” he said. “But Sharad Pawar as well as other senior leaders of the NCP have made it clear that they want to expose the failures of the BJP and Shiv Sena government.
“There was some distrust between the Congress and the NCP earlier because we had just contested elections independently,” former NCP state president Tatkare said. “But we drive one common agenda now. The opposition is definitely much stronger now.”
The two leaders also said that it was unfair to claim the parties were a tame opposition in the first couple of years of the government. Any government should be given a reasonable time to be able to perform before showing aggression as an opposition, they said.