After PM outreach, will Congress get opposition leader

Will the Congress get the status of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha after Prime Minister Narendra Modi pleaded the line of “main nahi, hum” and spoke of “sahmati (consensus)”

Mr Modi, who won the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 on the slogan of “Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India)”, is changing his strategy after 18 months in power at the Centre.

His new line is “consensus and not confrontation”, which was explained in his speech in the Lok Sabha on Friday.

If the ruling BJP wants to go ahead with this line in Parliament, then the first obvious step would be to grant the status of LoP to the main Opposition in the Lok Sabha as the Congress may not ask for it after its claim was rejected by the Chair on the ground of lack of requisite numbers.

The Prime Minister is following the Vajpayee line of consensus after realising that this the only way to get the government’s bills passed in the Rajya Sabha where the BJP-led NDA is in a minority.

While the two-day special sitting of Parliament, held to commemorate the making of the Constitution, has opened up a channel of communication between the top leaders of the government and the Congress, the process could continue without diluting or compromising the stand of the BJP and the Congress on core issues.

The rigid approach of the BJP strategists and the floor managers has not only made the Congress aggressive inside and outside Parliament, but has given it the space of the main Opposition.

This has gone against the BJP in the Delhi and Bihar polls. The “give-and-take” strategy would have delayed the revival of the anti-BJP parties, but the managers miscalculated or misread the situation.