A shocked and politically embarrassed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, instantly visited the disaster zone to supervise the operations to save remaining lives and rush severely injured to hospitals, and to take a view of the causes and measures to overcome such disasters in future.

Certainly, the Prime Minister could not keep off his mind on how damaging it would be for him and the BJP he is heading and hoping to launch into a third term in 2024, at the national level. His Government would have retained some prestige had the Railway Minister Mr Ashwini Vaishnaw offered to resign, once there was "line clear” for safe travel on the eastern coast.

PM Modi, who makes the most careful selection of trust-worthy nominees in positions - Union Ministers or Governors or heading policy-moulding institutions, may have asked him to continue, given his own ideas for a well-modernised countrywide rail system for New India. Certainly Mr. A. Vaishnaw has had ideas on these lines.

It was just a few days earlier, May 28, that the Prime Minister, charged by the Congress and other opposition parties being "egoistic" inaugurated the new Parliament Building alongside the old "Council House" - the venue of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha hitherto since the proclamation of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of India in 1950.

To the collective Congress-led opposition demand that the new Parliament should be opened by the President of India - accorded the highest place in our Constitution and Parliament, Modi's response was to quote an Australian example of Government and Opposition being together for the working of Democracy. And to claim that the people of India had given themselves "a gift for the 'Amrit Mahotsav" by the new Parliament Building.

Perhaps, even the most authoritarian style of governance does not conflict with the ideal of Democracy in India. India under the present dispensation may well consider that India's governance is far more democratic than many other nations, an inspiring example may even be drawn from Turkey. Here Mr R T Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish) won his third term after a run-off with his rival and is seen more as a monarch, the most powerful leader changing the Constitution too, after Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey.

For the recharged Congress and other major parties at the regional levels, hoping to get together into a formidable anti-BJP alliance for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and rid the country off the danger of a "New India" with dominant Hindu chauvinism, the massive rail disaster becomes a major poll boost for the Opposition in terms of "negligence" of the BJP rule at considerable cost in human lives.

The BJP is yet to recover from the destabilising impact of the recent poll verdict in the only Southern State, Karnataka, it had ruled and now lost to the Congress, given the weakening in the numbers for the Lok Sabha seats in most States barring Uttar Pradesh.

Even here, with Mr Modi's "double engine" government at work, things may not be as rosy as in 2019 as the regional parties are making efforts for understanding with the Congress.

The Congress has agreed to attend the larger meeting of heads of all opposition parties in mid-June, as a result of the initiatives taken by Mr Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar, and his meetings with all the leaders, especially seniors including Mr Sharad Pawar (NCP) and the Congress President Mr M Kharge and Mr Rahul Gandhi and of other opposition parties.

The Congress looks confidently to win the assembly elections by 2023 end in the three States, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The outcome in the three States would also become a major determining factor in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2024. (IPA Service)