Congress can’t be kingmaker
With the Samajwadi Party achieving a majority in Uttar Pradesh not only has the Congress game plan to be the kingmaker in the state gone awry, but has also made the party vulnerable to pressure from its allies at the Centre.
Speculation is rife that the regional parties which include the Trinamul, BJD, AIADMK, JD(U) and SP could now look at the option of coming together at a common platform being termed “fourth front” during the 2014 general elections.
The AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who led the party in the UP polls, accepted responsibility for the party’s poor performance in UP. “Main aage tha, zimmedari meri hai (I led the party. The responsibility is mine),” was Mr Gandhi’s reply to the query about who was to blame for the party’s debacle. Instead of pointing fingers at leaders like Digvijay Singh for controversial statements, Mr Gandhi made it clear that it was “a weak organisation in UP, which led to the poor performance of the party.”
In UP, if Ms Mayawati’s rainbow coalition of dalits, upper castes and Muslims failed to click, the Congress’ desperate attempts to play the minority cards miserably failed. The BJP’s strategy to import Uma Bharti from Madhya Pradesh and woo the OBC through the tainted backward leader, Babu Ram Kushwaha boomeranged. Also the BJP lost its committed 31 per cent upper caste vote bank to the SP, following its move to woo the OBC vote bank. The voting trend also indicated that the minority vote bank returned to the SP fold with the party promising 18 per cent job reservation for Muslims.
Corruption, however, played a key role in deciding the voting trend, a BJP leader admitted. Corruption charges had plagued both the Congress at the Centre and Ms Mayawati in the state, while SP scion Akhilesh Yadav went to voters apologising for the past mistakes and kept the tainted functionaries out of electoral fray.
That the Congress and its leaders failed to make any impact became evident with the party losing a majority of Assembly berths in Union minister Beni Prasad Verma’s Lok Sabha constituency, Gonda, Raj Babbar’s Lok Sabha constituency, Firo-zabad, and P.L. Punia’s (Congress’ dalit face in UP) Lok Sabha berth, Barabanki. The BJP swept all the Asse-mbly berths in Union minister Sriprakash Jaiswal’s Parliamentary constituency, Kanpur.
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