Federal front looks like a pipe dream

Will the efforts of TRS to expand its base outside Telangana, particularly in the Hindi heartland, succeed or will it once again end up as a major publicity stunt in Telangana as it happened during last general elections? Though KCR had met the left party leaders and RJD leaders recently and proposed to campaign on behalf of RJD or SP in Uttar Pradesh, it may not cut much ice with the voters there.

Forming a federal front also appears to be a distant dream. People are not willing to accept the left ideology because their party functioning has not changed with times. Only the leaders have changed. There was a time when the party leaders used to sacrifice their wealth for the party. Now it's different. Others are asked to part with some of their wealth and this is more prevalent at the lower level of the rank and file. Parties like TRS have no base whatsoever in the cow belt region.

The race for filling the political vacuum in the northern belt is now on between the Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress. Both are eyeing the national stage.

TMC which has 43.3% vote base in Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal was not able to create vote banks in Tripura, Manipur, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh in 2019 elections. On the contrary, AAP with 18.1% vote base in Delhi now has 7.4% in Punjab, 0.4% in Haryana and 3% in Goa.

Congress has been losing its vote share with every election and decimated in states like Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, which used to send a large number of MPs to Lok Sabha. Even in the states where it is the main opposition to BJP, it could not throw up any challenge to BJP.

Both Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee are fighters and want to fill the gap. The Bengal tigress has expanded her party base to Goa, Haryana, Meghalaya and Tripura and is going to test waters in Goa.

However, AAP seems to be ahead in the race to emerge as an alternative to BJP. It is very seriously contesting in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa.

The promises it has been making in Punjab seem to be getting a good response and there is every possibility that it might emerge as the number three party in Punjab though it wants to turn the tables of Congress and come to power, which of course is a distant dream. In 2017 it had won 20 seats in Punjab and polled 24% votes. By the year- end, two more states Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat will go to polls and AAP wants to contest there as well. The advantage AAP has is that its leadership has better acceptability in the Hindi heartland unlike TMC or any other regional parties.