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Deccan is the key to Delhi

The first vote in the general election won't be cast for six weeks, but the Congress has already begun predicting an absolute majority for itself. This sounds funny when you consider the desperate speed with which Sonia Gandhi is striking up alliances, but that is a story for another day. Right now, let us look at the party in isolation.

Common sense dictates that the Congress must do two things to make its boast come true. First, win more seats than last time. Second, hang on to the 141 seats which it did win in 1998. And that may be a little more difficult than it seems. Without going on a tour of India, let me point to the one area that is absolutely crucial to the Congress -- the Deccan, meaning the three states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka.

There are 118 Lok Sabha seats spread amongst the three. In 1998 the BJP and its allies -- Lok Shakti and the Shiv Sena -- won just 30. But as many as 64 of the 141 Congress MPs in 1998 came from the Deccan. (In other words, the Congress won just 77 of the 425 seats outside these three states.) Can the Congress do at least as well today, if not better?

Begin with Maharashtra which elects 48 Lok Sabha members of Parliament. In 1998, the Congress tally was 33 and its ally the Republican Party of India won four, while the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won just 10. Sharad Pawar had done a magnificent job of getting all factions to bury the hatchet, not just in the Congress but even within the RPI. For good measure, he forged an alliance with the local unit of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party. Today, each of those three parties has broken. That doesn't benefit the Congress!

All this is strongly reminiscent of 1996, when the Congress and the RPI were plagued by in-fighting. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance then swept Maharashtra, winning 32 seats. Only Pawar's persistence prevented a repetition in 1998. (The BJP-Shiv Sena group actually won a greater percentage of the votes in 1998 than in 1996!)

Turn now to Karnataka, a state currently ruled by the rapidly-fragmenting Janata Dal. It says much for the image of the Janata Dal leaders that neither the BJP nor the Congress wants to touch them with a bargepole; if the BJP doesn't want J H Patel, then the Congress wants nothing to do with Deve Gowda.

Actually, the BJP state unit has some reason on its side. Of Karnataka's 28 seats, the party won 13 and its Lok Shakti allies got three more. Why should it burden itself with an unpopular chief minister, especially if it means slicing the pie even more? It is making no secret of the fact that it resents Patel's last minute switch to Ramakrishna Hegde's camp.

The Congress, which won just nine seats in Karnataka, is badly placed to take advantage of the public squabbles in the BJP-led alliance. There has been a steady trickle of Congress leaders (such as Rajasekhara Murthy) into the BJP. Nor is there any charismatic figure in the local unit who can whip the party back into shape.

Let us turn finally to Andhra Pradesh, the one state where the Congress could win a majority of the 42 seats -- as in 1996 and 1998. Only one point worries Congressmen: will the ruling Telugu Desam Party ally with the BJP? Though the regional party's 12 Lok Sabha MPs supported the Vajpayee ministry, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu announced that the understanding ended with the fall of the ministry. Will it be revived?

A section of the Telugu Desam Party wants to throw in its lot with the BJP. Their reasoning is simple: in 1998 the BJP and the Telugu Desam won more votes than the Congress -- but the anti-Congress vote was divided. Naidu's fear, however, is that by joining hands with the BJP he stands to lose the minorities. But the damage, if any, has already been done. It can't have escaped anyone's notice that the Vajpayee ministry survived for 13 months with Telugu Desam Party support.

It is still too early to predict actual numbers. But one thing is already clear: the keys to Delhi lie in the Deccan. Less so, perhaps, for the BJP which came to power though doing relatively poorly here in 1998; but these three states are absolutely crucial for the Congress. Does Sonia Gandhi realise that in her preoccupation with north India?

T V R Shenoy