Motormouths, mixed messages and a fragile alliance: Congress-SP’s UP challenge

As the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections draw closer, the top leadership of the Congress and its ally, the Samajwadi Party, is confronted with a familiar challenge: Reining in loquacious second-rung leaders.

While the two allies, who unitedly dealt heavy electoral blows to the BJP in UP during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, are yet to formally begin seat-sharing talks for the assembly election due in February, their prominent leaders are already at daggers drawn, taking frequent swipes at each other instead of jointly leading the charge against the ruling BJP.

On stage and off stage

On Tuesday (September 22), Imran Masood, the Congress MP from Saharanpur, organized a UP Vijay Sankalp Sammelan at the party’s old headquarters at Delhi’s 24, Akbar Road. The conclave, which brought together several prominent party leaders from UP, including the Congress’s state in-charge Rajendra Pal Gautam and state unit chief Ajay Rai, saw Masood and his colleagues make a strident pitch for unseating the BJP from power in the state.

Also read: In Akhilesh starting PDA yatra from Rahul’s Raebareli, a message to Congress?

Off stage, however, discussions among scores of party workers in the audience revolved not around the Congress’s poll prospects or the attack on the BJP by the leaders seated on the dais. Instead, the incessant attacks that Masood and other UP Congress leaders have been hurling at the SP in recent weeks dominated whispers among party workers as did the turf war between Rai and Gautam.

No sooner did the sammelan end than Masood was back to scorning the SP while Rai and Gautam, between whom communication, say party sources, “has completely broken down”, went their separate ways with their respective supporters.

A volatile Congress leader

Over the past few weeks, Masood’s public statements have invariably focused on undermining the SP’s utility for the Congress in reclaiming power in Uttar Pradesh. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to launch a PDA Rath Yatra, as part of his party’s consistent peechhda (backwards), Dalits and alpasankhyak (minorities) outreach plan, from Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s constituency of Rae Bareli on September 24 has triggered a fresh outburst from Masood.

Asserting that Yadav’s “campaign will bear no fruit in UP if the Congress is not on board”, the Saharanpur MP told The Federal, “the only one who can defeat the BJP is Rahul Gandhi… if Akhilesh wants to defeat the BJP, he should finalize the alliance with us without wasting any more time”.

A bitter exchange

A day earlier, Masood had drawn the ire of Samajwadi MP Iqra Hasan for airing similar views about Akhilesh. The usually mild-mannered Hasan, whose Lok Sabha constituency of Kairana neighbours Masood’s Saharanpur, asserted that the “only leader who matters in UP is Akhilesh and if the Congress wants to contest alone, the loss will be theirs, not ours.”

Also read: 'BJP keeping its options open, not committing Yogi for another term'

Masood’s response to the young Kairana MP is only expected to rile the SP further. Stating that until her party’s defeat in this year’s West Bengal polls, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee too brushed aside the relevance of the Congress, Masood said, “Look at what the BJP did to the Trinamool; Mamata Banerjee is nowhere today but she is still a fighter… Akhilesh is not a fighter like Mamata Banerjee; he can’t take on the BJP on his own; he tried it in 2022 and failed.”

Masood and Hasan’s bitter exchange may yet be dismissed as brinkmanship between two leaders vying not just to project themselves as the bigger leader of their community but also of the same region of the state – western UP – while trying to endear themselves to their respective party bosses. However, there is no dearth of leaders among the two allies who appear more determined to train their guns at one another than in taking down their supposedly common political opponent, the BJP.

Seat-sharing talks likely to make matters worse

Ramji Lal Suman, the SP’s controversy-prone Rajya Sabha MP, told The Federal that the Congress high command should “show these chhutbhaiye neta (inconsequential leaders) their place” and ensure that they “do not speak out of turn in a way that will damage the alliance”.

Asked whether Suman’s statement made political sense as the bickering between SP and Congress leaders was harming the alliance’s public image, Gautam said, “We do not want a situation where the image of the alliance suffers but the responsibility for that has to be shared by leaders of the SP too; no one should be under any false impression that the SP can defeat the BJP without the Congress.”

Also read: Ahead of UP polls, Owaisi's aide Asim Waqar joins Congress, says AIMIM 'helping' BJP

Sources in the two parties say the current turbulence in the alliance is only expected to get more severe once the two sides begin seat-sharing negotiations, which makes it “all the more important that motormouth leaders like Masood and others keep a united front in public”.

Speaking in multiple voices

The trouble within the Congress, as always, is far worse. While Masood was quick to remind the SP that Akhilesh’s decision to go solo in the 2022 UP assembly polls had ended with his party winning only 111 of the state’s 403 seats, he seems to have conveniently forgotten that the Congress’s tally in the same election was a humiliating two seats out the 403 it contested in an election that saw the party’s campaign being directly led by none other than Priyanka Gandhi.

For the upcoming election, the Congress has already been speaking in multiple voices. While the Congress’s UP desk in-charge Gautam has repeatedly made a case for the SP giving the Congress a “50 percent share of the seats”, the party’s UP unit chief Rai says “we will not settle for less than 150 seats”.

Not just SP leaders but even Congress seniors privately agree that both Rai and Gautam are grossly overestimating their party’s electoral strength and insist that such demands are nothing more than “negotiating tactics”. The SP, sources said, is willing to concede “no more than 80 seats to the Congress, though the initial offer is expected to start with about 50 seats”.

Irrelevant but damaging

A senior SP MP told The Federal, “Comments by leaders like Masood and Ajay Rai are irrelevant because any decision on the final shape of the alliance will be taken between Akhilesh and Rahul, who are both determined to keep the alliance intact”, but added, “the sooner that decision is taken, the better it will be for both parties, otherwise this public bickering will severely dent the alliance’s image and there will be a big cost to pay in the elections”.

Also read: Akhilesh redefines 'PDA': Samajwadi Party now woos Brahmins ahead of UP polls

Another SP MP said, “the Congress never learns… They did exactly this same thing in Bihar also; till the last day of filing nominations for the election (in 2025), their leaders were attacking the RJD on a daily basis and finally they couldn’t have a proper seat-sharing arrangement also and handed the state back to the NDA on a platter… If they don’t want the same thing to be repeated in UP, the Congress high command must step in immediately and tell these people to shut up”.

The old blame game

The Congress, on the other hand, believes it is the SP that is “deliberately downplaying our usefulness in the alliance”. A former UP Congress chief told The Federal, “A lot has changed between 2022 and now… Organizationally we are still weaker than the SP but in terms of our appeal, because of Rahul Gandhi, we are much stronger now and there are many sections of society; different caste groups and communities, who may not vote for the SP if it doesn’t ally with us but will come to us if we fight as an alliance.”

The Congress is particularly confident that it can rally various Dalit sub-castes, who are otherwise historically wary of the SP, to its alliance and also ensure that the Muslim vote doesn’t split between its coalition, Mayawati’s struggling Bahujan Samaj Party and Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, which is eying an aggressive expansion in the state.

Also read: ‘Let’s talk before it’s too late’: Owaisi offers alliance to Akhilesh ahead of 2027 polls

Message undelivered?

However, for any of these ambitions to take flight, the two parties need to first ensure that they can project an image of unity before the voters. Leaders taking daily swipes at each other and spending more time questioning the other ally instead of the BJP does the exact opposite.

Sources said an irked Akhilesh recently sent word to Rahul, Priyanka and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to “stop your leaders from maligning the SP”. Masood’s unfiltered outbursts and unrealistic demands for seats from Gautam and Rai suggest the message hasn’t been conveyed with the force it deserved.