Even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, there were already murmurs from those who wanted to assemble a massive alliance against him. The victory of an anti-Modi alliance in the Bihar by-polls earlier this year gave this idea further fuel. On Thursday, it finally became a reality.
Meet the Samajwadi Janata Dal, which technically translates as the Socialist People’s Party, although a break-up of those words has more to do with the new outfit’s antecedents rather than any single ideology.
The leaders of six different parties have authorised Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav to work out the “modalities” for them to merge into a new, combined party with the tentative SJD name. They’ve also announced their first public showing: a dharna on December 22 against the government on a number of issues.
Who are they?
This proposed Samajwadi Janata Dal brings together six parties, with varying footprints across the country. They are the Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party, the Bihar-focused Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Samajwadi Party, Karnataka’s Janata Dal (Secular) and the Haryana-based Indian National Lok Dal.
This grouping features a number of political bigwigs, with the meeting on Thursday alone featuring one former prime minister and three former chief ministers. But all of them appear to be on the backfoot in one way or another in their respective states, mostly reeling from the onslaught of the Bharatiya Janata Party on the back of Modi’s immense popularity.
What brings them together?
Other than the need to take on Modi, the parties can actually claim common ground thanks to their heritage. All of the parties are actually offshoots of the Janata Parivar, itself a grouping that came together in an attempt to defeat another incredibly powerful prime minister, Indira Gandhi, after the Emergency.
A decade after the Janata Party defeated Indira Gandhi, many of the factions of this parivar came together to form the Janata Dal which also sent a prime minister to New Delhi. Although in both cases the foundational ideology was anti-Congressism, the leaders also espoused welfare-socialism based on the ideas of Ram Manohar Lohia.
Who was left out?
The most immediate outlier is the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which also has ties to the old Janata Party. Reports however suggested that its leader, Ajit Singh, was uncomfortable joining hands with the INLD, because both parties see themselves primarily as representatives of Jats in the Haryana-Western Uttar Pradesh belt.
Then there’s also the Biju Janata Dal, another offshoot of the erstwhile Janata Dal, which is currently in power in Odisha. The party has said it will wait and watch while the new Janata Parivar outfit develops before deciding whether to be a part of the front.
What presence do they have?
Two of the parties in the grouping are currently in power in their states. That would be the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar. But both of these parties also took huge losses in the general elections earlier this year, conceding a huge number of seats to the now-ruling BJP.
In the Rajya Sabha, however, the parties do have a considerable presence, enough that they can stand in the way of the government’s plans to pass crucial pieces of legislation. The parties had, in fact, already decided that they would be working together during this winter session of Parliament in taking on the BJP on legislation.
Their potential to haul in votes when working together is also crucial. Even combined, the Samajwadi Janata Party would only have picked up about 7% of all the votes nation-wide during the General Elections, based on a crude addition of their vote-shares.
But if you eliminate cross-voting patterns, where they might have been working at cross-purposes during the Lok Sabha elections, and consider the fact that the Left parties and even the Congress are likely to work together with this outfit (at least as things stand now), they would have put up a reasonable fight.
This is again, on the vote share front, and it doesn’t even feature the Bahujan Samaj Party, which got the third-most votes in the country but didn’t win a single seat or the Trinamool Congress, which did extremely well during the Lok Sabha elections but now appears concerned enough about the BJP that it might want to ally with a larger anti-Modi front.
Why did it take so long? (Why hasn’t it happened before?)
Too many cooks. The heads of each of these parties have always been prima donnas, unlikely to be too comfortable working with other leaders. Particularly when there was a chance that a prime minister would have to be picked from among them, there was little likelihood of them coming together. But now that they have a strong, united party to oppose, they appear to have come to the conclusion that there is no other choice.
This is what prompted arch rivals Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar to come together in Bihar, with some success in the by-polls. The Samajwadi Janata Dal will now hope that it can take this formula and apply it nationally.
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Meet the Samajwadi Janata Dal, which technically translates as the Socialist People’s Party, although a break-up of those words has more to do with the new outfit’s antecedents rather than any single ideology.
The leaders of six different parties have authorised Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav to work out the “modalities” for them to merge into a new, combined party with the tentative SJD name. They’ve also announced their first public showing: a dharna on December 22 against the government on a number of issues.
Who are they?
This proposed Samajwadi Janata Dal brings together six parties, with varying footprints across the country. They are the Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party, the Bihar-focused Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Samajwadi Party, Karnataka’s Janata Dal (Secular) and the Haryana-based Indian National Lok Dal.
This grouping features a number of political bigwigs, with the meeting on Thursday alone featuring one former prime minister and three former chief ministers. But all of them appear to be on the backfoot in one way or another in their respective states, mostly reeling from the onslaught of the Bharatiya Janata Party on the back of Modi’s immense popularity.
What brings them together?
Other than the need to take on Modi, the parties can actually claim common ground thanks to their heritage. All of the parties are actually offshoots of the Janata Parivar, itself a grouping that came together in an attempt to defeat another incredibly powerful prime minister, Indira Gandhi, after the Emergency.
A decade after the Janata Party defeated Indira Gandhi, many of the factions of this parivar came together to form the Janata Dal which also sent a prime minister to New Delhi. Although in both cases the foundational ideology was anti-Congressism, the leaders also espoused welfare-socialism based on the ideas of Ram Manohar Lohia.
Who was left out?
The most immediate outlier is the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which also has ties to the old Janata Party. Reports however suggested that its leader, Ajit Singh, was uncomfortable joining hands with the INLD, because both parties see themselves primarily as representatives of Jats in the Haryana-Western Uttar Pradesh belt.
Then there’s also the Biju Janata Dal, another offshoot of the erstwhile Janata Dal, which is currently in power in Odisha. The party has said it will wait and watch while the new Janata Parivar outfit develops before deciding whether to be a part of the front.
What presence do they have?
Two of the parties in the grouping are currently in power in their states. That would be the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar. But both of these parties also took huge losses in the general elections earlier this year, conceding a huge number of seats to the now-ruling BJP.
In the Rajya Sabha, however, the parties do have a considerable presence, enough that they can stand in the way of the government’s plans to pass crucial pieces of legislation. The parties had, in fact, already decided that they would be working together during this winter session of Parliament in taking on the BJP on legislation.
Their potential to haul in votes when working together is also crucial. Even combined, the Samajwadi Janata Party would only have picked up about 7% of all the votes nation-wide during the General Elections, based on a crude addition of their vote-shares.
But if you eliminate cross-voting patterns, where they might have been working at cross-purposes during the Lok Sabha elections, and consider the fact that the Left parties and even the Congress are likely to work together with this outfit (at least as things stand now), they would have put up a reasonable fight.
This is again, on the vote share front, and it doesn’t even feature the Bahujan Samaj Party, which got the third-most votes in the country but didn’t win a single seat or the Trinamool Congress, which did extremely well during the Lok Sabha elections but now appears concerned enough about the BJP that it might want to ally with a larger anti-Modi front.
Why did it take so long? (Why hasn’t it happened before?)
Too many cooks. The heads of each of these parties have always been prima donnas, unlikely to be too comfortable working with other leaders. Particularly when there was a chance that a prime minister would have to be picked from among them, there was little likelihood of them coming together. But now that they have a strong, united party to oppose, they appear to have come to the conclusion that there is no other choice.
This is what prompted arch rivals Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar to come together in Bihar, with some success in the by-polls. The Samajwadi Janata Dal will now hope that it can take this formula and apply it nationally.
