No pain no gain

Congress worried about BSP support

In the end, Congress dreams of BSP help to end 15 years of BJP rule in Madhya Pradesh collided with BSP’s desire to piggyback on Congress across the Hindi heartland. Without a doubt, BJP is the gainer in the second mahagathbandhan failure after Chhattisgarh. Mayawati was unsparing in her criticism of Congress leaders and their commitment to end BJP rule, before directing her ire at Digvijaya Singh for his remark on probe agencies pursuing the BSP supremo. Interestingly, she left a window open for Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, a sign that it may still be early days to completely write off opposition unity.

After Bihar, the gathbandhan idea revived at HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing in ceremony where the bonhomie between opposition leaders, and especially between Sonia Gandhi and Mayawati, was hard to miss. Smaller parties regularly tout Congress’s successive defeats in Gujarat, Karnataka, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand — which were essentially BJP-Congress contests — to highlight its need for allies. But it would appear that a pre-poll alliance is more difficult for Congress leaders to swallow than a defeat.

The prospect of a BSP rise at Congress expense is not a remote possibility given the precedent of Uttar Pradesh where BSP appropriated Congress’s residual Dalit vote bank after their 1996 alliance. By the 1970s and 80s, when socialist parties made inroads into the OBC category, Congress could still count on Muslim and Dalit votes. The Times of India, October 5