Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav organised a mega rally on 27 Aug giving it the name of ‘BJP Bhagao, Desh Bachao’. The rally witnessed as many as 3 lakhs listeners and the stage was shared by a few opposition leaders.

The mega rally was being regarded as a platform to display the opposition unity against the BJP-led NDA government and put up a show of the opposition parties as one unit standing unanimously to not just fight but defeat BJP in the Lok Sabha elections due in 2019. However the aim behind organising the rally does not seem to be accomplished, it rather seemed like a launch show of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son Tejashwi Yadav and a dias to take out personal grudges against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

All the opposition parties were invited although only a few turned up. Uniting the opposition is one thing and getting the united opposition to work together to achieve the goals is a totally different matter. The main drawback for this opposition unity is that the regional parties have too many grudges amongst themselves to even bear each other’s presence at the same place, let alone work together unanimously. Congress is the only major opposition party which holds little grip acrros Pan India, rest all of them are limited to regional parties and also have the disadvantage of being limited in number in the respective regions.

In such situation getting all the anti-NDA parties together to put up a united fight in the nearing polls is as tough a task as finding a needle in the hay. Though Congress High Command Sonia Gandhi has taken initiatives to unite the opposition on two occasions in the recent past, the absence of the top leaders of the party in Lalu’s rally spoke otherwise. Both Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi side lined themselves from the rally, though the party had sent Ghulam Nabi Azad as its representative with a recorded message from Sonia Gandhi. Responding to this Lalu had shown his disappointment saying that it would have been good if had any top leader from Congress shared the stage with Lalu.

Other than the absence of top leaders of Congress, CPM and BSP leaders also did not show up. CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury did want to share the stage with its rival TMC Chief Mamata Banerjee. While BSP Chief Mayawati said that she would not attend the rally in the presence of her rival Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav. The personal grudges amongst the parties may be a heavy price to pay for the bigger aim of defeating BJP and this is the major loop hole in the mahagathbandhan the oppositions are trying to portray.

Shaibal Gupta, founder member-secretary of Asian Development Research Institute in Patna said that “this mega rally drama can be perceived as a psychological boost for the opposition but to have a national mobilisation, one needs some national parties to flock together, which is clearly not visible. The rally is being seen as a large mobilisation of Muslims and Yadavs however, it also increases the scope of counter-mobilization, as Muslims and Yadavs form 30% of Bihar’s population said, Gupta.

Commenting on the disillusionment of opposition unity shown during this rally JDU’s national general secretary KC Tyagi questioned that if it was united opposition where is the united policy, economic policy and the common agenda? He also mocked the rally to be a launch show for Tejahswi Yadav rather than a unity propaganda. Tyagi also pointed out that Uttar Pradesh is a major state that contributes in the political equations in the country and BSP Chief Mayawati is a mass leader, without her no alternative alliance is possible that the opposition is dreaming of to fight against BJP.