The Old Enmity

After more than a decade, the Left and the Congress are on opposing benches

AJIT SAHI

Illustration: Anand Naorem

EXPECT THE knives to be out in both the Congress and the Left, now that the latter has finally withdrawn Parliamentary support that had propped the minority Manmohan Singh government for four years. These knives have been sheathed for a good 12 years, since 1996, when then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao led the Congress to its worst Lok Sabha defeat until then. (Sonia Gandhi did worse in 1999.)

For two years thereafter, 1996-98, both the Congress and the CPM were shoulder to shoulder, supporting (from the outside) the United Front governments of HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral, with the BJP as their common foe. The CPI, in fact, had joined those governments. During 1998-2004, the Left and the Congress once again sat next to each other in Parliament, training their guns on the Atal Behari Vajpayee government rather than on each other, taking care not to allow their intense rivalries in West Bengal and Kerala to spill over nationally during Assembly elections in those states.

Yet, the Congress and the Left could never get to be trusting allies in these 12 years. That reflected right from the start of their tumultuous relationship in May 2004 as the Left defined the paradox in the first year by vehemently opposing the government’s bid to increase petrol and diesel prices. It later forced the government to backtrack from aggressively pushing Special Economic Zones. Yet, they were partners at some level.

Now, of course, there is every reason for the Congress and the Left to go back to the noholds- barred acrimony that characterised their lifelong political opposition to each other until 1996. This may get severe with the 15th Lok Sabha elections only months away. The stake is high for both: the last Lok Sabha election gave the Left its highest number of MPs ever and the Congress a stab at power after eight years of wilderness. All eyes will now be on CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, whose leadership since 2005 has been spent more on managing the rocky relationship with the Congress than in opposing it tooth and nail.