The BJP's strategy seem to be to wean away allies from the Congress in Tamil Nadu, and maybe later in UP, Bihar and elsewhere, though in slow doses, but without wooing them into a new alliance.
The idea seems to be only to weaken the INDIA bloc from within -- and leaving it at that, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The embarrassingly overwhelming praise for the late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the latter in person, has triggered a new political discourse on the possibility of a 'secret agreement' between the ruling parties at the Centre and in the state.
At least, rival AIADMK predecessor Edappadi K Palaniswami and 'minor' rival NTK's Seeman feel that DMK Chief Minister M K Stalin is into it, if only to cause eyebrows to raise in the party's Congress ally in the state.
Both Modi and Rajnath Singh said how Karunanidhi did not allow regionalism to come in the way of nationalism, and how he went on to become a national leader and became an architect of coalition governments at the Centre.
The occasion was provided by Rajnath Singh releasing a commemorative coin to mark Karunanidhi's centenary at Chennai, as a part of the year-long celebrations planned by the DMK.
The criticism from the AIADMK and the NTK, for starters, flowed from the presence of a BJP veteran in what essentially was an in-house celebration of an ideological rival in the DMK.
Contesting EPS's charge that the DMK had allowed Hindi words to appear on the coin when Karunanidhi was known to be against all forms of 'Hindi imposition', the DMK's A Raja said that it was the case even when a commemorative coin was released in honour of the late AIADMK founder, M G Ramachandran.
Raja also pointed out how the Karunanidhi coin carried the inscription, 'Tamizh Vaazhga', or 'Long Live Tamil'.
Yet, no DMK leader had an explanation or defence to offer when it was pointed out how the MGR coin was released by EPS when he was chief minister and no BJP minister from the Centre was invited for the function.
The reasons for what is beginning to look like an acrimonious debate are not far to seek.
After a hugely successful run in the Lok Sabha polls, the DMK-Congress alliance, in the company of the two Communist parties, and the MDMK and the VCK, hopes to repeat the feat in the state assembly elections, due in the summer of 2026, roughly two years from now.
In his maiden statement after the Lok Sabha poll results were known, Stalin, who is also the DMK president, told party men how the alliance had recorded more votes than its rivals in 221 of the 234 assembly segments.
He wanted the cadres to work for a 200 seat victory, and reiterated the appeal at the DMK district secretaries' meeting in the second week of August.
In between, you had state Congress President Selvaperunthagai and party MP Karti Chidambaram going to town on the 'injustice' done to the party in seatn sharing for the Lok Sabha polls.
Clearly, they were seeking to make out a case for more seats than in the past from within the DMK alliance in the assembly elections in 2026 -- but were focussing on past 'denials' and not present or future 'strengths'.
It is not unlikely that the DMK leadership would have taken it to the Congress high command to ask party leaders in the state to behave, even if the idea was for the latter to usher in the long forgotten 'Kamaraj rule'.
It is a constant reference point for Congress leaders over 30-odd years, which have only seen its vote share dwindling from 20 per cent in 1989 to less than five in recent years, especially when contesting alone.
It is unclear if the Congress high command has since asked state party leaders to shut up and mind their business, leaving seat sharing for the assembly polls to be discussed at appropriate levels at appropriate times.
However, the DMK has a point, as in the past, when Congress emissaries from Delhi talked then chief minister M Karunanidhi into conceding 60 odd seats for the party in the 2G-tainted 2011 assembly polls.
The alliance lost the polls badly, as was only to be expected under the circumstances.
Apart from the 2G scam and other anti-incumbency factors, the DMK leadership concluded that by holding them prisoner as an alliance partner in the ruling UPA-II at the national level, the Congress had upset and angered party cadres, who point-blank refused cooperation in the poll campaign.
Judging the cadre mood post facto, Karunanidhi declared early on that they were ditching the Congress alliance for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, which was a washout for the DMK in the state and for the other, also at the national level.
Yet, when they contested together in the assembly polls two years hence in 2016 and the Congress partner won only eight of 40 seats that Team Stalin had allotted after negotiations with all allies, Karunanidhi sort of jumped the gun to declare that it was a waste to have given away 40 seats to the national party.
In the 2021 assembly polls that the DMK won in the company of traditional allies, the Congress bagged 18 of the 25 seats contested.
The current efforts of some party leaders in the state is to up the seat-share tally by sounding the bugle early on.
The DMK cadres are not impressed and are holding back, seemingly at the express direction of the leadership.
The implied message was/is that the DMK leadership was in touch with the Congress high command to 'discipline' its state leaders who are proving to be an embarrassment for the alliance.
Some in the DMK hierarchy also see a spill over of the state Congress internal feud for supremacy and claims to TNCC presidency.
It is in this scenario, the ruling BJP at the Centre is believed to be fishing in what it sees as the TN political waters that it could stir and make murky before the assembly polls.
By thus far continuing with former IPS officer K Annamalai as the state BJP chief despite the party's poor showing in the Lok Sabha polls (unlike expected in Delhi), the national leadership has sent out a clear message that they were in no mood to do business with the AIADMK under EPS, at least not until after the results of assembly polls in Haryana and Maharashtra are known.
The party can delay alliance formation until after the end of 2025.
For his part, EPS too has been unrestricted in his criticism of the BJP and attack on Annamalai as if both continued to be the AIADMK's main adversary -- even if for the second slot in the state's electoral politics.
Against this background, the BJP national leadership does not seem to think or worry about wooing the ruling DMK, which has been very successful in all elections after the death of AIADMK's charismatic chief minister J Jayalalithaa in December 2016.
It would be happy to wean away the DMK from the Congress rival, which after the Lok Sabha polls, has breathed fresh air and has been adopting an aggressive posture not seen over the past ten years of Modi 1.0 and 2.0.
Thinking for the DMK, the BJP seems to have concluded that a weakened AIADMK would be a good enough excuse for the ruling party in the state to ditch the Congress ally, whose votes it had otherwise counted in for the past victories.
The BJP leadership has also finally convinced itself that the party does not have 'transferrable votes' for the DMK, as the Karunanidhi leadership reportedly explained it to the Vajpayee-Advani duo leading the NDA-1 government at the Centre, following the debacle of the state ruling party in the 2001 assembly elections.
It means that there was/is no meaning or justification for the BJP to expect an alliance with the DMK, as both of them have also revived an ideological battle on multiple fronts, like religion, language and federalism.
The MoSha duo would be seemingly satisfied if the DMK snapped ties with the Congress, which in turn would weaken their national ally, as much as the BJP itself has been weakened in relative terms in the LS polls earlier this year.
That the BJP leadership would be targeting the Congress rival from the sides and not take it on head-on as in the past decade became clear after the ruling party and government retained its past aggressiveness without let up even after the marginal reversals in the Lok Sabha polls.
Clearly, the BJP seems to have concluded that the INDIA combine's poll successes, compared to the past, and also the Congress rival's unanticipated ascendancy, that too under a Rahul Gandhi whom the BJP social media especially had ridiculed no end through ten long years, still owed to the politico-electoral strengths of its regional partners.
The strategy thus seem to be to wean away the allies from the Congress in Tamil Nadu, and maybe later in UP, Bihar and elsewhere, though in slow doses, one after the other, but without wooing them into a new alliance with the BJP.
The idea seems to be only to weaken the INDIA bloc from within -- and leaving it at that.
To that extent, the BJP seems to have revived its efforts in and with southern Tamil Nadu, where the party does not exist in ways for the high command to take the state unit into greater confidence than already.
Even if its efforts failed, as it mostly likely is to, no one elsewhere in the country is wiser to the leadership's misadventure unless they try out something outlandish and over-ambitious and get exposed or over-exposed, to be precise.
Otherwise, the Stalin leadership is least concerned about media speculation and social media posts about the imminent anointing of minister-son Udhayanidhi Stalin as deputy chief minister before the CM leaves for the US to attract investments later this month.
The party is clear that it does not need anyone's clearance for the same, least of all the ruling BJP adversary at the Centre.
Answering newsmen's queries in the matter, Stalin responded with the single and singular Tamil phrase, 'kaniyanum' or 'pazhukkanum'. Translated, it means 'to ripen'.
Yet, Stalin left the phrase open to multiple interpretation, like only his late father Karunanidhi was known to play with words.
It is anybody's guess if Stalin meant that the time was not yet 'ripe' for him to elevate his son as the deputy CM, especially when there were many seniors in the party, whose egos may be hurt.
Or, did he mean that Udhayanidhi too has to 'ripen' as a party leader and minister before being able to do justice to the responsibilities of a deputy chief minister, which would be much more than being ornamental in parties and governments that are driven by coalition dharma or internal party feuds and balancing acts!
N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
