The Congress is not fully convinced about the strategy of fielding its senior leaders in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls with insiders fearing that it will be counter-productive in the 2019 Lok Sabha
The Congress is not fully convinced about the strategy of fielding its senior leaders in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls with insiders fearing that it will be counter-productive in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Poll strategist Prashant Kishor is said be behind this idea as he views that fielding former MPs and Union ministers of the party against the Samajwadi Party, BSP and the BJP could help the Congress in increasing its numbers in the state Assembly.
Although the party got only two Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh in the current Lok Sabha, it had won 22 seats in the previous election.
“If we field Salman Khurshid, Sriprakash Jaiswal, R.P.N. Singh, Jitin Prasada, Pradeep Jain, Beni Prasad Verma, Praveen Singh Aron, Rajkumari Ratna Singh, Annu Tandon and others... then it will be a risk in the sense their defeat would not only demoralise the party but we would not have candidates for the Lok Sabha elections,” a section of the party feels.
If insiders are to be believed, Mr Kishor wants the party to project a brahmin leader as its “face” which could attract minorities and dalits — the traditional winning combination of the Congress.
But the real issue is whether Muslim votes can split in Uttar Pradesh against the BJP.
This because they had voted decisively against the BJP in the Bihar and Delhi Assembly elections.
The BSP might have failed to open its account in the Lok Sabha but Ms Mayawati is its face and this could consolidate dalits against the Samajwadi Party dominated by Yadavs and the BJP, which is in a double mind whether or not to project a chief ministerial candidate. As for the Congress, it is not fighting the battle to form government but to protect its support base with the help of smaller “like-minded parties”. The BJP will have no option but to play the polarisation card either in the name of “nationalism” or “Hindutva” aggressively after realising how its “development” plank had failed in the Bihar and Delhi elections.
And the Congress cannot attract floating voters even on the issue of development because it has been placed in fourth position.
Mr Kishor delivered in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections because Mr Narendra Modi was the BJP’s PM candidate and in the Bihar polls, Mr Nitish Kumar was the face of JD(U)-RJD-Congress combine. But in UP, he is working on a poll strategy for the Congress which has been “faceless” for the last 25 years.
