A Common Cause

Barely eight months ago, a pall of gloom hung over the Opposition parties when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept the 2019 Lok Sabha election with 353 seats, including 303 for the BJP, its highest tally ever. Today, with new activism in the air, the opposition parties are a much more enthused lot. Two currents—one emanating from the east and other from the west—have gathered enough tailwinds to propel a grand coalition (mahagathbandhan) of opposition parties into a confrontation with the Narendra Modi-led central government.

The eastern current emerges from Assam where a flawed National Register of Citizens (NRC) effectively declared 1.9 million Indians “stateless”. In both Assam and Tripura, the resultant churn led to violent protests, suspension of internet and train services and deployment of army units. The anger spread like wildfire across the country as soon as the NDA government at the Centre rammed through the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019 in Parliament declared that a National Population Register (NPR) would follow soon.

The western current took shape late last year in Maharashtra, where a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance (the Maha Vikas Aghadi), pulled the rug from under the BJP’s feet. The swearing-in of the Uddhav Thackeray-led