These 11 parties with 91 MPs, who made equal distance from BJP and Congress, will contest elections on their own
India
oi-Anjan Kumar Chaudhary
On Tuesday, around 65 political parties in the country decided to join hands with alliances led by the Congress or the BJP. But, there are at least 11 more such big parties, which have 91 MPs in the Lok Sabha and they have not considered it appropriate to be part of any alliance or they could not talk to anyone.
Meaning, these are all 11 political parties, which will contest elections separately from the NDA and India alliance and their effective role in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections cannot be denied considering the number of MPs they have.
63 MPs are elected from three states
The special thing is that three of these parties are currently in power in three states and from there 63 MPs reach the Lok Sabha. These three states are- Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Congress used to dominate in these three states earlier. But, now the base of Congress has completely eroded and BJP has also not been able to consolidate its base.
These are the 11 parties with 91 MPs
The 11 parties that we have discussed to stay away from NDA or India alliance are- YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), AIUDF, JDS, National Democratic Party and Shiromani Akali Dal (MAN).
No one’s politics has been completely neutral
However, all these parties have not become part of any alliance. But, his politics at the Center has not been completely neutral either. For instance, the YSR Congress Party, which registered a landslide victory in Andhra Pradesh in 2019, and the BJD, which has been in power in Odisha since 2000, have periodically supported the BJP government in Parliament.
Telangana, on the other hand, has the ruling BRS, which was the first to initiate the initiative to unite the anti-BJP opposition parties. But, due to the entry of Congress, it has kept itself away from the opposition front. Simply put, it seems to be leaning towards the anti-BJP opposition.
BSP will contest alone
The third major force is Mayawati’s BSP, whose 10 MPs won in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Mayawati has been the chief minister of UP four times and her party has announced to go it alone in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and the upcoming Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh assembly elections.
‘A strong government should be formed, not a strong government’
The BSP supremo has issued a statement saying, ‘We have to ensure that a helpless government is formed at the Centre, not a strong government. Only this will ensure that the interests of the poor, dalits, tribals, oppressed and minorities are upheld, even if the BSP does not come to power.
In the midst of the exercise of alliances, Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik has targeted the BJP and said that the Center is not providing adequate assistance to the state in its schemes. He has asked the BJD MPs to strongly raise the issues of the state in the monsoon session of Parliament starting from Thursday.
Behaving like ‘political untouchables’ – AIMIM
As far as Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s party AIMIM is concerned, being kept out of the opposition alliance, he has said that his party is treated like a ‘political untouchable’. The AIMIM has a good influence in Hyderabad and parts of Telangana and has seen a different political tuning with the state’s ruling BRS.
Owaisi’s party has established its influence in Maharashtra, Bihar, UP and Karnataka in the recent past. Party spokesperson Waris Pathan has targeted the opposition alliance saying leaders like Nitish Kumar, Uddhav Thackeray and Mehbooba Mufti are among its allies who have allied with the BJP in the past. But the Bengaluru program kept away AIMIM, which always works to defeat BJP. (Input-PTI)