Sonia sends SOS to Maya, Mulayam, Mamata to keep Modi at bay

If you thought the Congress, embarrassed at projections of its worst ever tally in a Lok Sabha election, has its tail between its legs, think again.

In a last-ditch attempt to cobble together a government in the hope that the exit polls are at least marginally wrong – and the NDA falls short of the halfway mark – the Congress party is reportedly reaching out to “like-minded” parties with the objective of keeping the NDA and BJP from forming the government. And the first three who have come to mind appear to have been the unlikely troika of Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee.

A report in The Economic Times says party president Sonia Gandhi “personally reached out to” Mamata Banerjee more than a week ago. The same report said the All India Congress Committee has been in regular touch with BSP chief Mayawati as well as with the Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Does the math add up for the too-hopeful Congress?

The CNN-IBN-CSDS survey predicts 13 to 17 seats for the SP, 10 to 14 for the BSP in Uttar Pradesh. If they score a couple of seats in Madhya Pradesh, the BSP tally could go up to 16. That is around 32-36 seats between the two UP-based parties. The Trinamool Congress could win 25 to 31 seats in WB. If the Congress manages to work out this ‘3M’ formula and manage their internal differences, this could add about 60-odd seats to the Congress’s tally. With the best projection of all the exit polls for the UPA putting it at 135, it appears that the math will still not add up, unless the third front or federal front comes together as well to keep Modi out.

These third front parties have been clubbed under “others” in most of the exit poll compilations, together expected to win anywhere between 130 to 150 seats.

In spite of this, The Economic Times report said the Congress, as the largest anti-BJP party, is reaching out to parties outside the UPA too, “as part of working out a minimum understanding of keeping Modi and the BJP out of power”.

Mamata has been an ally of the UPA in the past, the latter two – bitter rivals in Uttar Pradesh – have both provided outside support to the Congress-led government, though never simultaneously.

Sonia reportedly reached out to Mamata just when the latter and Narendra Modi were engaged in an ugly war of words, the West Bengal chief minister calling him a “bhonda” (fool) and a “gadha” (donkey) even as he called her a lioness glued to her chair and plunging West Bengal into chaos in the name of transformation.

It was reportedly at Sonia Gandhi’s behest that the party is setting up some kind of backchannel discussions with both the Uttar Pradesh leaders .

Through the just-concluded election campaign too, while the Samajwadi Party has openly said it would be willing to partner the Congress in order to keep the BJP out, Mayawati has remained tight-lipped. Incidentally, the Congress’s campaign in Samajwadi Party-dominated constituencies has also been somewhat low-key, while Modi has used his rallies in Uttar Pradesh to rail against “SaPa and BaSaPa”.

While there was always speculation that the Congress would try to prop up a minority government against Modi, the party has kept its cards close to its chest. In the recent past, notwithstanding party vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s machismo in insisting that the party will form UPA 3, he had in fact confided in party members that he would prefer to sit in opposition if the vote is clearly against the UPA.

The “structural changes” that Rahul has emphasised, over and again, may indicate that he prefers to focus on rebuilding the party and a new generation of Congress leaders to spending to the next couple of years playing coalition politics. Given the numbers at hand, Rahul may just get his wish.