Outside looking in, Cong role unclear in UP alliance
NEW DELHI: Even as the broad opposition front of the Samajwadi Party ( SP) and the Bhaujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh has expanded to include the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) for the Kairana bypolls, the Congress, which unilaterally offered its support to the RLD candidate, remains outside the alliance.
The RLD has fielded Begum Tabassum , a former Lok Sabha MP from the BSP who was then with the SP, in Kairana and Mayawati is most likely to announce support for her closer to the election. The three parties and its leaders were involved in negotia- tions, but the Congress was kept out of the discussion. In a sign of opposition unity, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav will campaign with RLD vice president Jayant Chaudhary after May 20, said a person familiar with the matter.
The Congress, whose candidates lost their deposit in the recent by-elections to Gorakhpur and Phulpur, decided to stay out of the race in Kairana. Local leader Imran Masood, considered a rival of Tabassum, announced he would support any candidate who has the potential to take on the BJP.
Leaders of the Congress, SP, and BSP in the state attribute the unclear place Congress occupies to a set of reasons.
For one, Rahul Gandhi was Yadav’s ally in last year’s assembly polls, but the poor show led to a ‘chill’ in ties, said multiple leaders from the Congress and SP. While the consensus in SP is that the alliance was a mistake, Congress leaders insist the SP would have fared even worse without it. “The Congress did not deserve over 100 seats in the assembly. We gifted that (election) away to BJP,” said a SP leader. A leader who works closely with Rahul Gandhi said, “SP would have suffered the same fate as the BSP and got even fewer seats but for us.”
Two, the SP feels the Congress has not reciprocated the gesture in other states. Yadav, a close confidant of the former CM said, wanted Rahul to invite him to campaign in Gujarat, but received a cold response.
Three, as the SP’S proximity to the BSP grew, its distance from Congress deepened.
“Akhilesh and Mayawati are working in tandem. The former is cautious not to hurt the latter, and the BSP chief recognizes that Yadav is different from the SP leadership she dealt in the past,” said a BSP leader.
Yadav, said the leader, will not go overboard to accommodate the Congress in an opposition alliance without taking Mayawati into confidence. This was visible during the bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.
A Congress leader said that the party had reached out to Yadav and suggested that he withdraw from the ‘weaker’ of the two seats. Yadav brushed it off.
Four, UP’S dominant players say that the Congress does not have the strength to take on the BJP. SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who opposed the Sp-congress alliance in 2017, recently said, “Congress is not worth more than 2 seats,” hinting at Rae Bareilly, Sonia Gandhi’s pocket borough and Amethi (Rahul Gandhi’s seat). An SP leader said the alliance can offer five-eight (of 80) seats to the Congress. The Congress, one of its top leaders said, will not agree to anything less than 15 seats. “This (5-8 seats) is an insult,” he added.
And finally, there are some within the SP-BSP combine who believe that keeping the Congress out is better since the party, through upper caste candidates, can wean away a section of votes that would go to the BJP otherwise.
Senior UP Congress leader Pradeep Mathur however, said the party was busy with the Karnataka polls. “Karnataka elections were more important than the bypolls. All our top leaders were busy in Karnataka and, therefore, could not devote much time to Kairana talks.”
Badri Narain, professor at the GB Pant Social Science Institute in Allahabad, says, “This is a nascent stage of alliance-formation. Negotiations for 2019 have not started in all seriousness. And therefore, we cannot conclusively say if Congress will be a part of the alliance or not.”