UP bypolls: Behind facade of camaraderie, a raw deal to Congress by SP

The Congress will not field candidates in any of the bypoll-bound nine Assembly constituencies of Uttar Pradesh but support nominees fielded by its INDIA ally, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. The decision, being glossed over by both parties as a unanimous one to “prioritize victory over seats” (baat seat ki nahi jeet ki hai), comes after the SP refused to part with constituencies it felt the Congress had no chance of winning against the ruling BJP.

“Against the backdrop of growing political and social tension under the BJP rule and the goal with which INDIA was formed, we have decided that the Congress will not field candidates for the UP bypolls. Our leaders and party workers will strengthen the candidates fielded by the SP or any other ally. It is not about seats but about winning… Our aim is very clear; it is to prioritize victory over seats. It is not about contesting two or four seats. It is about contesting together to defeat the BJP,” Avinash Pande, the Congress’s in-charge for UP, told reporters at the party’s 24, Akbar Road headquarters on Thursday (October 24).

Accompanied by UP Congress chief Ajay Rai, Pande said the Congress, as a national party, had “certain responsibilities” and that to defeat the BJP, it was important to “rise above personal political interests”.

Also read: Uttar Pradesh: Ayodhya at epicentre of Yogi’s by-poll battle

Congress had “no option”

The Congress’s announcement came following Akhilesh Yadav’s late-night tweet on October 23 declaring that all nine bypoll candidates of the INDIA bloc will contest on his party’s election symbol — the cycle — and that the SP and the Congress “stand together”.

The SP and Congress leadership are expected to continue with these robust assertions of unity through the election campaign, hoping that the results would reflect a cementing of the huge gains the allies had made against the BJP in the June Lok Sabha polls. However, sources in both parties readily concede that the Congress was “left with no option” but to bow out of the bypolls after the SP refused to part with seats that its ally had set eyes on.

Seats with no chance

Leaders privy to the seat-sharing talks told The Federal that the Congress was offered the Ghaziabad and Khair seats while the SP remained adamant about fielding its candidates in the remaining seven constituencies of Majhawan, Phulpur, Meerapur, Kundarki, Karhal, Sisamau, and Katehari.

The Congress, however, was not keen on contesting the seats being offered to it by the SP, as it had last won the Ghaziabad and Khair constituencies in 2002 and 1980, respectively. The SP, too, has had a poor poll record in both seats. It last won the Ghaziabad Assembly seat in a 2004 bypoll; since then, the constituency was won by the BJP in 2007, 2017 and 2022, while the BSP wrested it in 2012. Held by the BJP since 2017, the Khair Assembly seat in Aligarh district has never been won by the SP.

Also read: BJP mocks at Congress after SP decides to contest all nine UP seats

Lost opportunity?

Sources said the Congress had been insisting on contesting the Majhawan (Mirzapur district) and Phulpur Assembly seats in east UP and the Meerapur (Muzzafarnagar) constituency in west UP. Though the Congress has as poor a poll record in these constituencies as it does in Ghaziabad and Khair, the party’s state leadership felt that with support from the SP, its candidates had a good chance of wresting these seats, as they have a substantial population of Dalits, backward castes and, though to a lesser degree, also Muslims.

During the Lok Sabha polls, a major consolidation of these castes and communities behind the INDIA bloc had helped the SP and the Congress win 37 and six seats, respectively, taking the alliance’s tally to an impressive 47 seats in the state that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. The BJP, which had swept across 71 and 62 of the state’s constituencies in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, respectively, was reduced to just 33 seats from UP — a tally that eventually prevented Prime Minister Narendra Modi from taking his party beyond the simple majority mark for the first time since 2014.

Rahul’s narratives

Congress leaders privy to the seat-sharing discussions with the SP told The Federal that a major reason for the party demanding the Majhawan, Meerapur, and Phulpur constituencies was that it felt the “save Constitution” and “bhagidari-hissedari” (read caste census) narratives spun by Rahul Gandhi found resonance with the Dalits and OBCs of UP.

“A big reason for INDIA’s win in the Lok Sabha polls was how Rahul’s message resonated with Dalits and backward castes in every village and town of UP. The SP had its vote bank but it was our narrative and Rahul Gandhi’s campaign that brought the additional block of Dalit and non-Yadav OBCs to the alliance. That message still resonates with the people in UP and the Congress should have been allowed to take electoral advantage of that,” a senior UP Congress leader told The Federal.

This leader added, “The SP’s reason for not allotting these seats to us was that we performed poorly there in the past elections, but then, the circumstances then were very different from now.” He further claimed that the “Congress would have fared better than the SP in getting Dalit and non-Yadav OBC votes because since the Lok Sabha results, we have continuously toured across constituencies where these caste groups are present in large numbers, held Samvidhaan Samman Sammelans and sustained Rahul Gandhi’s narrative of hissedari-bhagidari”.

Also read: UP Assembly bypolls: BJP names candidates for 7 seats

Adamant SP

SP leaders, however, disagree vehemently with the Congress’s assertion, claiming instead that the party “won Lok Sabha seats in UP on [its] strength”.

“With the exception of Rae Bareli and Amethi, the Congress had nothing on the ground in the other seats it won in the Lok Sabha... whatever it got then was because Akhilesh-ji ensured that the SP cadre mobilised voters for the Congress. The situation is the same now; the Congress has no presence on the ground in these nine bypoll seats... allotting seats to the Congress would have meant a walkover to the BJP and our cadre in these seats would also have felt demoralised,” a Lucknow-based SP leader close to Akhilesh told The Federal.

Tit for tat

Sources say another reason the SP refused to make concessions for the Congress was the latter’s refusal to accommodate the party in seat-sharing for the recently concluded Haryana Assembly polls, as well as the Congress’s reluctance to part with seats the SP is demanding for the upcoming Maharashtra polls.

“The SP could have helped the Congress win a few seats in the Ahirwal belt (of south Haryana) but because of their (the Congress’s) over-confidence, they lost the election everyone expected them to win. Now they are making the same mistake in Maharashtra; we have a strong presence in 10–12 seats of Maharashtra, but the Congress is unwilling to offer us more than six seats. If they act like big brother in states where they think they are stronger, why should we not treat them the same way in UP where we are the dominant force?” said the SP leader quoted earlier.

Not a time for tiff

The acrimony over the bypoll seat-sharing talks now threatens to give the BJP and its allies an obvious advantage in UP, Congress insiders feel. “By keeping the Congress out, the SP will not be able to secure the votes of Dalits and also some non-Yadav OBC groups,” a second UP Congress leader said, adding that the BJP had “begun its bypoll preparations immediately after the Lok Sabha elections and is in a much stronger position now than it was in earlier this year.”

UP Congress chief Ajay Rai tried to keep up a brave face. “We are following the instructions of our high command. The leadership felt that now was not the time to fight over seats but to ensure that the momentum the INDIA bloc picked up (during the Lok Sabha polls) is intensified further. We decided to show a big heart and told the SP that it can contest on all seats and we will support their candidates fully,” Rai told The Federal on the sidelines of Pande’s press conference.

Also read: Maharashtra polls: Samajwadi Party seeks 12 seats from MVA alliance

Joint campaign by Rahul, Akhilesh?

Officially, the SP and the Congress leaders also claim that the bypolls could see a joint campaign by Akhilesh and Rahul to revive the memory of their spirited campaign during the Lok Sabha polls and also dent the BJP’s claims of the Congress having “surrendered” to the SP.

The Gandhis have never campaigned for an Assembly bypoll. Even with Lok Sabha bypolls, their participation has been a rarity — reserved for occasions when either one of them is in the fray or when the party wants to send a larger political message.

Need to put up united front

Interestingly, this time round, Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi is contesting a parliamentary bypoll in her brother’s erstwhile seat of Wayanad in Kerala. Other occasions when the Gandhis have joined a Lok Sabha bypoll campaign were when Indira Gandhi campaigned for Mohsina Kidwai in the 1977 Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll and, in 2009, when Rahul joined Raj Babbar’s bypoll campaign in Firozabad against Akhilesh’s wife, Dimple Yadav.

If Akhilesh indeed convinces Rahul to join the UP assembly bypoll campaign — despite Priyanka’s electoral debut and the Congress’s crucial poll battles in Maharashtra and Jharkhand — it would be no mean feat. It would help their parties put up a more united front in public and keep the INDIA bloc electorally buoyant, irrespective of the raw deal the Congress has got in Uttar Pradesh.