The Congress has brought rival parties Trinamul Congress, CPI(M), Samajwadi Party, BSP, Janata Dal (U) and RJD together in favour of UPA presidential nominee Pranab Mukherjee.
Besides, it has also made the AIADMK, an arch rival of UPA ally DMK, passive in this election, which has seen a change in the political equations ahead of the general election.
The Congress party might have lost the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Goa and came to power in Uttarakhand with the help of the BSP and Independents after the polls, but it has skilfully handled the presidential and vice-presidential election, margninalising the BJP.
Regional players had earlier wanted to be “kingmakers” but they did not get enough time for bargaining.
While Trinamul Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee took more than a month’s time to make up her party’s mind to back Mr Mukherjee, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav took less than 24 hours to support him after suggesting the names of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee for the top post jointly with Mamata here in the last month.
The BJP backed the BJD-AIADMK’s joint nominee P.A. Sangma with a calculation that this move would bring chief ministers Naveen Patnaik and J. Jayalalithaa closer to the NDA. But it miscalculated the situation.
Instead, the BJP failed to retain its old allies JD(U) and Shiv Sena as they too came out in support of Mr Mukherjee, who had played a role of “troubleshooter” of the Manmohan Singh government for the last eight years.
The Congress is all set to win both the presidential and vice-president’s elections comfortably. This victory will come as a morale booster for the Sonia Gandhi-led party ahead of the Assembly elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Delhi, and perhaps, Karnataka.