An alliance between the ruling Aam Aadmi Party and the opposition Congress until the recent past was out of the question.
The two parties, despite both being part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, had mutually agreed to fight separately, rather against each other, in Punjab.
As time passed by, the majority of leaders in both the parties in the state have started rethinking their strategy and are not averse to a patch-up “in the interest of the alliance” under drastically changed circumstances.
The aggressive posture adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Punjab, inducting two sitting MPs, one each from both the parties last week, has forced the two warring parties to reconsider their positions towards each other.
Despite the BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal going separate, the BJP is being taken as a serious challenger.
The fact that it has attracted three-time Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu, a third-generation Congressman and a grandson of a former Congress Chief Minister Beant Singh and another sitting AAP MP who had already been renominated for the contest, has forced the two parties to rethink.
Also, the arrest of the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by the Enforcement Directorate, which the opposition INDIA is fighting against together, has led the two Punjab rival parties to tone down rather than avoid criticism against each other, after realizing the “common enemy” in BJP.
Kejriwal’s arrest has been opposed by the Congress national leadership as well as the Punjab leadership.
The Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring despite crying vendetta by the AAP government in the state against the Congress leaders in the past has also criticised Kejriwal’s arrest.
Even the PCC working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu, who spent about six months in jail after being booked and arrested by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau, also opposed Kejriwal’s arrest.
The earlier bitterness between the two parties appears to have mellowed down having realized that they would be better together to fight off the BJP rather than fighting separately.
BJP is going to pose a serious challenge in constituencies like Ludhiana, Patiala, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar and Shri Anandpur Sahib.
The party is banking on the Hindu vote, which it expects to consolidate in its favour, while the non-Hindu vote is likely to be divided between three parties, the Congress, the AAP and the Akalis.
In case the AAP and Congress decide to field a single candidate instead of two, it will make a lot of difference in the outcome.
There still may be some bitterness among some leaders, but the workers at the grassroots level do not seem to have any such reservations.
Moreover, the majority of the AAP workers and MLAs are from Congress only.
Punjab is going to polls in the last phase on June 1.
There is still a lot of time left for any alliance if it has to materialise.
Like the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge earlier said the party’s doors were open for everyone till the last day of the withdrawal of the nominations, there is a strong probability that the AAP and Congress may burry the hatchet in Punjab in the common interest, which they may put it like “in the national interest to save the democracy and constitution”.
There is also an apprehension that in case the AAP-Congress alliance takes place in Punjab, it may trigger an Akali-BJP alliance.
Even if that happens, the situation will remain, by and large, similar. At least, there is no alliance between the BJP and Akali right now. It may or may not happen if the AAP-Congress alliance takes place.
As in the case of AAP and Congress, even for the Akalis and the BJP, there is still a lot of time left for a rapprochement. AAP and Congress by allying, will at least not be caught unawares if the alliance between Akalis and the BJP happens at any stage before the elections.
Politics, after all, is the art of possible, and no possibility can be ruled out at any stage.
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