Why So Many BJP Rivals Openly Or Tacitly Backed Murmu And Dhankhar
Many regional parties are tailoring choices specific to their political considerations at each particular moment.
Elected the next Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankhar secured 74.3% of the valid votes in the electoral colleage. His winning margin of 346 votes is the highest in the last six vice presidential polls since 1997.
Regional Calculus Yields Unexpected Support
Along expected lines, Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal and Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress backed the election of both President Droupadi Murmu as well as Dhankhar. The political ideologies of both these parties find their roots in contentious fallings out with the Gandhi family (Biju Patnaik in 1969 and Jagan Reddy in 2011), and may not want to be seen going along with the Congress on high-profile votes. Further, Patnaik and Reddy have not expressed national ambitions, allowing them to maintain a good rapport with the central government.
What is noteworthy in the 2022 presidential and vice presidential elections is that some parties that exited NDA in the recent past like the TDP and Akali Dal, backed the BJP’s candidates. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, the BJP’s some-time ally-often-rival in Uttar Pradesh since the 1990s, supported BJP candidates too.
Other parties like Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena took a split approach to the presidential and VP polls.
While the Thackeray camp voted for NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu in the presidential elections, it supported opposition candidate Margaret Alva for Vice President.
The very same Trinamool that spearheaded the opposition unity efforts during presidential polls by offering its party member Yashwant Sinha as the group’s candidate conspicuously abstained from voting in the VP polls.
It appears that all these political parties, whether part of either alliance or non-aligned, are tailoring choices specific to their own considerations at each particular moment.
(Image: PIB)
For TDP, BSP, Akali Dal, Thackeray Sena: A Fight For Survival
Consider Chandrababu Naidu and the Telugu Desam Party. Naidu quit the NDA before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. After facing a humiliating defeat in the state elections in Andhra, he has publicly admitted that it was a mistake to leave the NDA. With arch rival Jagan Reddy also appearing to get closer to the BJP, TDP would look to make a comeback to the NDA camp, or at least remain in the good books of the dominant axis of politics in the country.
Meanwhile, BJP wants to expand its presence in Andhra in alliance with Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party. To remain relevant, TDP would want to stop this combination from gathering momentum. TDP also has to reckon with a generational transition Like the situation faced by many other regional parties, Naidu’s heir apparent and son Nara Lokesh is not yet seen as acceptable to the base as the current leader is. In balancing family members with long-time party veterans, Naidu will look to prevent a situation like what recently played out with the Thackeray family and Eknath Shinde.
(Image: N Chandrababu Naidu/Twitter)
In Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati has publicly declared Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party as its primary rival rather than the BJP, as both BSP and SP compete for the label of being the champion of backward communities. For some time now, BSP has been backing BJP initiatives overtly and covertly, to the extent that some critics have called BSP the B-Team of BJP.
Mayawati lacks a strong successor and has lost the key vote bank of non-Jatav Dalits. Long-running central agency investigations against her for alleged disproportionate assets have weakened Mayawati’s hand in dealing with central governments. Also note that Vice President Designate Dhankhar is a Jat, an influential community in western Uttar Pradesh that BSP would not wish to antagonise.
In Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal got a drubbing in the Assembly Elections earlier this year, after leaving the NDA in 2020 on the issue of the farm laws that were later repealed. In all its years in the NDA, the BJP’s small but crucial Hindu vote bank gave the Akalis an edge in state politics with a formidable majority (Sikh) plus minority (Hindu) combination.
With the Aam Aadmi Party now emerging as the primary player in Punjab politics, and BJP too attempting to expand its base thru acquisition from other parties the SAD faces an existential threat. With the farm laws repealed, its primary point of disagreement with the Narendra Modi government and the BJP was extinguished. Can it make an attempt to return to the camp in power at the centre?
Prime Minister Modi’s tweet announcing Dhankhar’s candidature for Vice President in July called him "kisan putra" or farmer’s son.
Sukhbir Singh Badal at a grain market in Barnala, on Aug. 2, 2022. (Image: Sukhbir Singh Badal/Twitter)
In Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray’s final days as Chief Minister of Maharashtra coincided with the filing of nominations for the presidential election. As Eknath Shinde walked away from the Maha Vikas Aghadi government with two-thirds of Shiv Sena MLAs in tow, a similar share of the party's Lok Sabha MPs followed, and demanded that all of the party’s electors in the presidential election back Droupadi Murmu.
Fearing the loss of control over the entire parliamentary party, Thackeray agreed. Despite that, the Shinde faction went ahead and appointed its Lok Sabha party leader and whip after the presidential vote. With his conciliatory stance yielding no dividend, Thackeray had no reason to back the NDA candidate a second time round and announced support for Margaret Alva over Jagdeep Dhankhar for vice president. All this played out as the Shinde faction approached the Election Commission and asked to be recognised as the real Shiv Sena and be given claim over the party symbol.
A file photo of Uddhav Thackeray with Eknath Shinde (Source: Vijay Sartape/BQ Prime)
One-Off Case For JMM
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha is in an alliance government with the Congress in Jharkhand. The state has a high Scheduled Tribes population, where Droupadi Murmu had also been governor between 2015 and 2021. Do recall that JMM has been in alliance with BJP in the past, and some bonhomie was visible between the two camps when Prime Minister Modi visited to inaugurate the Deoghar airport. However, once the presidential election was out of the way, recent allegations by Congress members following cash seizure from some party MLAs that the BJP was attempting to destabilise the state government may have irked Soren as well, as he decided to support Alva for vice president.
Understanding Mamata Banerjee’s Head-Turner
Mamata Banerjee’s decision to have the Trinamool Congress abstain from voting in the vice presidential election was the most surprising stance among regional parties.
For years, she has shared an edgy relationship with Dhankhar during the latter’s tenure as governor of West Bengal. Banerjee also became the torchbearer of opposition unity in the presidential election, offering up party leader Yashwant Sinha as the common candidate. Given both factors, her decision came as a shocker to the opposition camp. But she had other considerations to weigh.
The Trinamool chief has openly conveyed national ambitions, expanding the party’s footprint beyond Bengal. With such a plan in mind, she may not want to antagonise a politically powerful community that often determines electoral outcomes in Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Delhi.
The Trinamool is competing with Congress to occupy the principal opposition party space and may not have wanted to play second fiddle to the grand old party by backing its vice presidential candidate. In the recent past, Congress leaders from the North East, Goa and Haryana have switched sides to the Trinamool Congress.
The sceptre of central investigative agencies hangs over this decision as well, with Mamata Banerjee’s nephew being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate.
Moreover, Mamata Banerjee openly opposing a VP candidate who until just days earlier had been governor of West Bengal would have come across as poor optics after the way Jharkhand Chief Minister Soren decided to support former Jharkhand Governor Murmu.
Was a peace pact struck days before Dhankhar’s candidate was announced, when Banerjee and Dhankhar were seen exchanging cordial greetings in Darjeeling, along with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma?
(Image: ANI/Twitter)
Banerjee didn’t need to go all-in for Dhankhar to convey a conciliatory note but merely abstain from voting, which is what Trinamool Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs (save one) did.
The fact is that most of these regional parties have been in alliance with the BJP at some point in the past, and their entire identities were built around anti-Congressism.
With changed power dynamics over the last quarter century, most of these have spent also time opposing the BJP. Now it appears that specific regional political considerations, centre-state dynamics, intra-party power equations, and avoiding the wrath of central investigative agencies have promoted some of these regional leaders to tacitly back the BJP's candidates for high offices.
Amitabh Tiwari is a political commentator, strategist, and consultant advising political parties and leaders. He was previously a corporate and investment banker.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.