Is There an Alternate Narrative to BJP? The Grand Alliance is a Grand Idea

New Delhi: The post-recess part of the budget session of Parliament marks the beginning and the end of things both administrative and otherwise.

Parliament gives its nod to the government of the day to withdraw and spend to meet its annual expenses. The sun firmly establishes itself in the northern firmament. Spring gingerly makes way for a precocious summer stepping in with intermittent sweep of warm westerly which strews all about a thick carpet of old and worn out leaves.

On one such day in the penultimate week of the session, Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi met CPI MP D Raja. The same morning newspapers had carried headlines in bold letters of Yogi Adityanath endorsing the concept of Hindu Rashtra.

"We first need to understand the possible action plans and their feasibility," says a Left leader who is aware of these developments.

CPI has already had a discussion within and a round with CPM in this regard. There are many proposals doing the round. Presidential elections slated in July this year could be one opportunity where this opposition unity could be put to an early test.

Can CPM and Mamata work together- in Bengal and outside? Can SP get its core Yadav constituency to vote for BSP's Dalit candidates if the two parties are to join hands? Feasibility of an electoral pact is more about compatibility of the social groups seeking to join hands for political power than their leadership holding joint rallies.

Sensing realignments in the next two years, BJP has already started to plan its next move. All NDA allies, small and big were invited by party president Amit Shah for a meeting in Delhi at the close of the budget session.

The first of its kind meeting in two years where a BJP minister counted 34 parties breaking bread and exchange notes. "That is ten more than Atalji's NDA," he told reporters.

East, North-east and the Coromandal Coast is the new catchment area. In the second week of April, senior party leaders and ministers were sent to spend a day in at least one Lok Sabha constituency which NDA lost in 2014.