How Telugu Desam leader Chandrababu Naidu’s last days in office as chief minister were devoted to bringing together all opposition parties in the hope of zeroing in on a prime minister in the event of Modi managing to win only a truncated mandate and how it was all blown away in the Modi tsunami is now history.

It is doubtful if Naidu would even like to remember the hectic travel that he undertook for such a lost cause in his current state of mind. Not only has he surrendered power in his own state, he has lost much of his relevance on the national stage, only days after he was fondly hoping to be the king maker, or even the king himself.

Naidu’s orchestrated campaign against the EVMs also fizzled out as it simply became out of tune with the reality. Modi’s mandate was so massive that charges of manipulation in the changed scenario would have sounded outlandish.

No wonder then that a feeble attempt to rake up the issue once again post election results has failed to take off as a scheduled meeting of opposition leaders could not ensure enough attendance. So much for the morale and sense of helplessness on the part of the opposition leaders.

Now, coming back to the Leader of the Opposition, the Congress party, or whatever is left of the opposition, has fallen short of the 54 seats, arrived at by calculating 10 percent of the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha, that it required for it to qualify for the Opposition leader status. But unfortunately, there is no convention of a fix to overcome this problem.

In the event of the single largest party falling below the half-way mark to form the government, there is a convention that some parties can come together and write to the President, staking claim. And the grouping need not necessarily include the single largest party as it happened in the case or Karnataka, where both BJP and a post-poll alliance of Congress and JD-S had staked claim, although the Governor preferred to call BJP’s Yeddyurappa first and gave him the opportunity. It is a different matter that BJP could not muster enough numbers.

It is an irony that while it is enough to produce letters pledging the required number to form a government, there is no such convention for claiming the status of the Leader of Opposition. Commonsense demands that if two or more parties agree on a common candidate to be the leader, as is the case in appointing a prime minister or a chief minister, that person should be considered as the Leader of Opposition.

No such claim has so far been made in the past and probably that is why there is no convention. New situations demand new solutions and it may be after all a worthwhile idea to explore such a possibility. The opposition parties can agree on a name and then stake claim for him or her to be declared as the Leader of the Opposition.

The Congress is said to be pursuing an alternative strategy to claim the opposition leader status for its leader of the legislature party in the Lok Sabha. There are reports that Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s meeting with NCP chief Sharad Pawar for exploring the possibilities of a merger has been in this direction, although both sides have clearly denied such prospects.

There is of course a feeling that the time has come for all good (Congress) men to come to the aid of the party. NCP, essentially a variant of Congress, has been in and out of the main party; so Sharad Pawar coming back into the Congress fold once again will be seen only as a natural development. More than the purpose of opposition leader status, this could mark the beginning of a new process of Congress consolidation under which some of the splinter groups re-unite with the party.

But it is obvious that unity crusader Chandrababu Naidu will have no role in this, unless the Andhra leader takes this up as a new mission so that he can still hope to have some national relevance. The role of an independent unity consultant would be an ideal fit for him, given he has nothing else to engage his attention currently.

In fact, his self-appointed role as unity architect was a last-ditch effort to retain currency as he probably knew what was coming his way in his home state. It was widely seen that he would have to yield place to Jaganmohan Reddy, who has not only secured Andhra in his pocket, but could well be in a position to play a national role, particularly as the Modi government does not enjoy a majority in Rajya Sabha yet and Modi 2.0 is drawing up a hectic schedule for big-ticket reforms.(IPA Service)