Migrant crisis: Congress in limelight with UP bus initiative
Congress seems to have stolen a march on the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the migrant crisis in Uttar Pradesh with its aggressive posturing against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
It is for the first time in 16 months since she formally joined politics and took up the task of reviving the grand old party’s fortunes in UP that Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has made some impact in India’s most politically important state with the polite but firm stand she took on the issue.
Gandhi insisted that the Yogi Adityanath government allow her party to ferry 1,000 buses with migrant workers from UP’S borders back to their homes across the state. She argued it was not a political but humanitarian issue.
The state government denied permission to the buses on technical grounds.the Congress claimed that the BJP had been rattled by Priyanka Gandhi’s stand and hence obstructed the attempt to help migrant workers.
While the BJP and the Congress slugged it out in the open, the two regional parties – SP and BSP – surprisingly watched the developments from a distance.
Political observers argue that both the SP and BSP are trapped in conventional politics.
“Both these parties understand the language of caste but now a new language has reappeared in the political scene due to this pandemic, and that is the language of poor, labourers and migrant workers though it is an old one.
For BSP and SP, it is dalits and other backward classes (OBCS),” political analyst Professor Badri Narayan said.
UP Congress leader Gaurav Kapoor said while the BSP was completely missing in action during the pandemic, the SP’S work was limited to a few social media messages.
But the BSP said it was working silently for the deprived. “We do it quietly and silently and don’t make propaganda of it,” said BSP leader Antu Mishra.
The SP too took the same line of argument.