New Delhi: There are major lessons to be learnt for New Delhi from the manner in which the ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance) failed to materialise in Uttar Pradesh.
While the Congress and other ‘secular’ parties showed promise during the last Bihar assembly elections, and then of stitching together a coalition following the Karnataka results to keep the BJP out of power in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, that dream is now falling apart.
Did Congress err by not taking SP, BSP along?
A large part of the blame is being laid at the feet of the grand old party. In the run up to the assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where it was poised to do well on its own, the Congress did not ally with the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Samajwadi Party. As a ‘big brother’, it was incumbent upon it to reach out to these parties. However, it did not enter into a seat sharing formula with them and contested the polls alone.
Though Congress managed to form the government in all these three states, it appears to have lost a big opportunity to ally with them for preventing a split in the non-BJP votes. On January 12, SP and BSP announced a tie-up in UP sans the Congress.
A day later, it announced its decision to contest all the 80 seats in the state.
Congress allying with SP-BSP would have rankled BJP
This has provided a glimmer of hope to the saffron party. If the Congress had also joined ranks with the two parties, it would have been near curtains for BJP in UP.
Along with its NDA partners, BJP won 73 seats during the 2014 general elections. If the SP-BSP-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance had come together, they would have bagged 37 seats, leaving the NDA with just 36. This time around, these parties have realised their potential. A crucial factor here could be Mayawati’s ability to transfer her votes to her allies, which other parties find difficult to replicate.
Also read: If Congress Fights All 80 Seats, Can the SP-BSP Alliance Take on Modi in UP?
Extrapolating those numbers, the alliance also looks set to do well. But will the Congress play a spoiler? The question being asked is if Congress would end up dividing the ‘secular’ votes in UP. The answer lies in the selection of its candidates; it can still end up harming the BJP if it picks up candidates from the same communities, castes and areas from which the saffron party would field its. This could still lead to a split in the ‘saffron’ votes.
Calls for fighting polls separately gaining ground in Delhi
In Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party has been gravitating between allying and not allying with the Congress. Though former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit, who has been named the new Congress president, said upon the announcement that she finds AAP “unreliable”, it is AAP which should be complaining.
For when some of its senior party leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh were making overtures towards the Congress, it was the latter which was keeping a distance. Last year, Congress president Rahul Gandhi did not invite Kejriwal to an iftaar party for which leaders of other parties were extended invitations.
Also read: Opposition Coming Together in UP Could Be the Game Changer in 2019
Former Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken along with many other Delhi unit leaders also constantly demanded that there should be no alliance with AAP. It was also stated then that Dikshit, her son Sandeep Dikshit and former Delhi Congress president J.P. Agarwal were in favour of allying with AAP for the Lok Sabha polls. But Sheila Dikshit recently said that the demand by some AAP leaders in Delhi Assembly to withdraw the Bharat Ratna from Rajiv Gandhi in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots has harmed the relations.
Kejriwal believes AAP better placed to defeat BJP
Kejriwal too, has over the past month or so changed his approach towards the Congress. He has been telling people in public and party meetings that voting for Congress would amount to helping the BJP. He has also been doling out numbers to buttress his claim. In 2014, he said, BJP got 46% votes, AAP 33% and Congress 15% of the vote share.
With a 10 percentage point shift likely away from BJP this time, Kejriwal is arguing that AAP is best suited to defeat it. In the slugfest, both parties – which vie for the same vote bank of Dalit, OBC, SC voters – have forgotten that together they would have beaten BJP in all the seven seats in even 2014.
Many believe that the Congress should adopt a more accommodative role if it wants to ensure that BJP does not win any of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi and Modi does not become prime minister yet again. It, however, remains to be seen if the mahagathbandhan efforts by some leaders on both sides fructify. Or else, it would be each party on its own.