Uttar Pradesh: Congress sees no tieup sans BSP, SP

The Congress sees no scope for a “grand alliance” against the BJP in the coming Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls without the BSP and the Samajwadi Party at a time when the JD(U) is trying to repeat the Bihar experiment to check the saffron party.

In Bihar, arch-rivals JD(U) and RJD came together against the BJP following poor performances in the Lok Sabha elections. But, the Congress feels, the ruling Samajwadi Party and the BSP are either not facing heat from the BJP and Sangh Parivar or are confident they will manage the numbers after the polls if the SP or the BSP fail to get a majority on their own.

Coming together of smaller parties ahead of the polls will have no impact in UP because of sharp polarisation on caste and communal lines. The All India Majlis-e—Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)’s main objective is to weaken the support base of the SP, BSP and the Congress through the communal plank which automatically helps the BJP. Its leader is talking of uniting the Muslims and dalits in UP, but in reality this means to split the political constituency of the anti-BJP parties. While the SP and BSP have not attracted non-Yadavs and non-dalits towards them with a calculation that their traditional vote banks would help them once again in the election, expected in the next 14 months, the Congress is pegging its hopes on floating voters and traditional votes.

The BSP is optimistic that it will come to power due to the anti-incumbency against the ruling SP despite the fact that it failed to win even a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections, while the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led party got five seats, and that too from his own family.

The BJP could face anti-incumbency at the Centre by the time UP goes to the polls. And the Congress is perhaps the only national party which has no face and no vote bank of its own in the state.

The JD(U)’s attempts to bring the anti-BJP parties together could be a non-starter in the sense that Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s good governance card, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s social justice card, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav’s call for unity of anti-BJP parties and their new friend RLD supremo Ajit Singh’s jat card have little following in UP.