The Congress should play upper-caste politics in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and bring the minorities back to the party from the Samajwadi Party and the BSP by launching a frontal attack on the BJP.
This will give a clear message to the minorities across the country that the Congress alone can stop the saffron party from coming to power.
This is the suggestion coming from the party MPs.
The Congress party does not want to antagonise the SP and the BSP whose support to the Manmohan Singh government has become crucial following the exit by the DMK and the Trinamul Congress. The SP and BSP are dominated by the OBCs and the backward castes.
The Congress cannot make a dent in their support base even by projecting leaders from the backward castes. But it can weaken them by attracting minorities, they viewed.
According to a section of the Congress MPs from the Hindi heartland, minorities from UP and Bihar could come back to the party in the Lok Sabha elections if it intensifies attack on the BJP.
This is because regional parties cannot stop the BJP from coming to power at the Centre on their own. They are divided and have had a history of allying with the BJP directly or indirectly.
“Minorities outside UP and Bihar have been voting for the Congress which has not identified with any particular caste, class, religion or language. But in UP and Bihar, we have neither attracted upper-castes nor retained backward castes. This has eroded our support base among minorities,” the Congress MPs concede.
The upper-castes in UP and Bihar cannot be comfortable with the SP, BSP, JD(U), RLD, RJD, LJP and other parties. They can vote for the BJP only if the latter reaches closer to the central power.
But the BJP lacks an all-India presence. It has not been able to project an upper-caste leader as the prime ministerial candidate after Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee.
In fact, its chief ministers in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka do not belong to the upper-castes. And in Bihar, it has failed to make an upper caste deputy chief minister.