The Congress has come a cropper in the recent political alignment in Uttar Pradesh. Shunned by both the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which have come together to contest the Lok Sabha seats in the State, and left with no option to fight alone, it has decided to make a virtue out of necessity by claiming that the election results would surprise everyone —meaning, the Congress would do better than expected.
That is for later. For now, it has been treated like a pariah by the two formidable regional parties in Uttar Pradesh, once the Congress’s bastion. Neither Akhilesh Yadav nor Mayawati seem to have been impressed by the Congress’s recent wins in the Hindi heartland States. By way of charity, though, the two leaders have left Amethi and Rae Bareli for the Congress since they are represented respectively by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.
At the Press conference on Saturday to announce seat-sharing, Mayawati lashed out at the Congress, calling it a “sold out” party. Rubbing more salt into the latter’s wounds, she declared that the Congress brings nothing to the table for the alliance. She added that there would be no transfer of Congress’s votes for the SP-BSP.
Left to fend for itself, the Congress will find it difficult to win more than a couple of seats out of the 80 on offer. It can, therefore, say goodbye to the prospect of coming anywhere close to the simple majority mark in a House of 543. Indeed, it would be a miracle if the party crosses 100 seats on its own. If that happens, various regional parties — even those which are presently inclined to back a Congress-led coalition — would gravitate towards a non-Congress/non-regional combine. There is also a possibility that, if the BJP comes within a striking distance of the simple majority mark— some of these parties could either extend outside support to the NDA or even join the formulation.
Even in 1993, when the SP and the BSP came together — a partnership that ended less than two years later in a most acrimonious manner — the Congress had been cast aside. The shadow of the Ayodhya mosque demolition then loomed on the Congress and nobody wanted to touch the party with a bargepole.
The Congress is now hoping that post-results, both the SP and the BSP will extend outside support to it in case it stand a chance of government formation. After all, most recently in Madhya Pradesh, the BSP did give support and help the Congress form a government. This is where the BSP’s hypocrisy lies. Mayawati says that there is no difference between the Congress and the BJP, since both are quite useless. Incidentally, this has been her stand for years. and yet, she has had no problems doing business with them in the past. After the SP-BSP alliance collapsed in 1995, she had become the State’s Chief Minister with the BJP’s support. After the Congress-led UPA assumed power in 2004, the BSP backed the Congress vis-a-vis the BJP.
A similar attitude has been adopted by the SP too. It fought the 2017 Assembly election in collaboration with the Congress, and lost. The alliance effectively ended with that defeat, but the SP continued to back the Congress by taking positions which matched that of the Congress. For 2019, it has had no hesitation in dumping the Congress.
The other instance of hypocrisy of these two regional parties is demonstrated in the SP-BSP combine’s decision to not contest the Rae Bareli and Amethi seats. They do not want to do business with the Congress but also ready to give an easier passage to the two top leaders of the party in the electoral battle. There is no doubt that, had the new coalition put up candidates in these two Lok Sabha constituencies, the Congress’s president and the former Congress president would have had difficulty in retaining their seats in the face of assaults by both the BJP and the SP-BSP alliance.
The Congress, although it has been putting up a brave front, really has no substantial support base it can draw from. The Muslims, the Yadav community and the Scheduled Castes would gravitate towards the new combination. The BJP would tap into the non-Yadav Other Backward Class votes and the upper castes. Besides, it will seek to dent the BSP’s Scheduled Caste vote share. The BJP will play the 10 per cent quota card for economically weaker sections of society regardless of caste — those that are not covered by the existing reservations. Together with the Ram temple issue, it will work to consolidate those that are out of the SP-BSP net.
What then is left for the Congress, besides its traditional voters, which have in any case dwindled in numbers over the years?
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