Lucknow: During the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, the-then Congress Chief Rahul Gandhi had made it clear that he wants the Congress to be strengthened in Uttar Pradesh, the place from where the party had started, and to live that reality Priyanka Gandhi was given the charge. Since then, the Congress general secretary and incharge of Eastern UP, Priyanka, has made numerous visits to the state, attacking directly or indirectly the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government.
However, it now comes to appear that the party is not going to spare its former ally Samajwadi Party as well. Is this a calculated move? Perhaps.
Sources in Congress party have told News18 that after a recent wielded Twitter attack on BSP Chief Mayawati by Priyanka, it made clear to its leaders that it is not going offer a friendly face to any political party in the state. Incidents of police brutality against anti-CAA protesters in Azamgarh, the parliamentary constituency of SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav, gave the grand old party its most recent chance to attack Samajwadi Party as well.
After some people were injured in the anti-CAA protest showdown between the protesters and the local police, Congress workers had dotted Azamgarh with ‘Missing’ posters of Akhilesh Yadav and had also questioned his silence on the police action on the anti-CAA protesters. Soon after the poster war, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi announced that she would be visiting Azamgarh. On Wednesday, she met with those injured in the police action in Bilariyaganj area of Azamgarh.
Priyanka's visit comes in the face of the Samajwadi Party chief not yet visiting his constituency. This was enough for Congress to give out a message to people of Azamgarh, sources said, even though Akhilesh has formed a committee to look into the matter and had condemned the police action on the protesters.
During Priyanka's visit to the injured anti-CAA protesters in Azamgarh, few women reportedly complained of a local SP MLA being hand in glove with the police. They alleged the lawmaker was with the police on taking action against the protesters.
If Congress sources are to be believed, the leadership has made one thing clear to its workers: attack SP as much as possible. After Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav poll formula turned a failure in the 2017 State Assembly Elections, the grand old party now seems in no mood to spare anyone.
History suggests that since the rise of SP and BSP, the graph of Congress had gone down in the state. Although BJP had also dented the vote bank of Congress, much of it was eroded after the rise of SP and BSP in the state. The electoral figures before and after the formation of the Samajwadi Party also testifies to this fact.
In the 1991 assembly elections, Congress contested 413 out of the 425 seats of undivided UP. In this, it got 17.59 percent of the votes while the Janata Dal (Samajwadi Party was formed from it after breaking away in 1992) got 21 percent and the BSP got only 10.26 percent. As the Samajwadi Party grew stronger, the Congress became weaker. Even in the mid-term elections in 1993, the vote share of the Congress fell from 17 to 15 percent.
In the 2002 elections, the vote share of the Congress was reduced to just 8.99 percent, while the SP rose to 26.27 percent and the BSP to 23.19 percent. Since then, the Congress has been clinging around 10 per cent vote share. The Congress became weak in UP after 1990 but, till Uttarakhand was formed a separate state, the votes received from there maintained respectable vote share for the party.
The issue of fighting with SP and BSP along with BJP was raised by some senior Congress leaders last year. The issue was raised by senior congress leader Nirmal Khattri and PL Punia. It seems now the newly constituted team of UPCC by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is all set to take the agenda forward in order to position itself as the main opposition party ahead of 2022 state assembly elections.
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