... For the first time in 50 years, a non-Congress party has emerged as an all-India formation (and) as an alternative to the Congress. While many factors - A.B. Vajpayee's image, the disadvantage of incumbency and desire for stability, among others - are responsible for the party's impressive gains ... its pre-poll alliances gave it the cutting edge during the campaign.
The performance of the AIADMK-led front (of which the BJP is part of) in Tamil Nadu has turned out to be the biggest surprise of the polls. The BJP's alliance with Ramakrishna Hegde in Karnataka, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa, and with Lakshmi Parvathi in AP have made the party more relevant nationally. Its understanding with the Akali Dal has yielded a rich harvest for both ... in Punjab.
Conversely, the Congress could conceivably have ended up with a very different tally had it allied with regional parties in different states. The success of the Maharashtra experience, which has come as a major setback to the BJP, only underscores this point. Till Sonia Gandhi came on the scene, the Congress High Command was negotiating with several regional parties with a view to evolving some kind of an arrangement with them. Hut the process came to a halt abruptly. Hegde is on record saying that talks were on with the Congress. But once Sonia Gandhi made it clear that she would be campaigning extensively, Sitaram Kesri suddenly stopped taking Hegde's call.
Kesri had an excellent equation with Jayalalitha and had attended the wedding of her foster son, in the teeth of opposition from the local Congress. But the talks with the AIADMK supremo fell through after several rounds of discussions conducted by emissaries like Vijay Bhaskar Reddy. She struck up a friendship with the BJP instead.
In the Hindi belt, an arrangement with Laloo Yadav's RJD was about to be finalised which might have benefitted both the parties ... Given a push, a tie-up with Mulayam's SP might have come through in UP. The BSP too was keen to align with the Congress in MP ...
