By Pradeep Kapoor
LUCKNOW:
Congress leaders and workers led by UPCC president Raj Babbar are opposed to
joining any alliance with SP and BSP for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Senior
leaders have appraised the party high command of their feelings and asked party
leaders and workers to stay away from such alliances.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi is
currently collecting feedback from party workers whether to join an alliance or
not. The Congress leaders feel that Mayawati and Akhilesh are not willing to
allocate more than two seats the party won in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Mayawati had blamed the Congress for
failure to reach any understanding on seats in the recent assembly elections in
Rajasthan Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In order to embarrass Congress
Mayawati joined hands with Ajit Jogi in Chattisgarh, although the move could
not damage the party, which recorded an impressive victory in the
tribal-dominated state.
Shocked by humiliation in recent
elections, Mayawati is not willing leave seats to Congress in UP. This is more
or less the approach of Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh too. As he is not
willing to antagonise Mayawati at this stage, he is also not willing leave more
seats to Congress.
Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu
Singhvi, however, said that the issue of joining an alliance was still open,
provided the party got a respectable number of seats to contest. Senior
Congress leaders feel that party is on a revival path with the backing of
people, who are fed up with the Modi and Yogi governments.
According to a senior party leader,
who was instrumental in leading the Congress campaign in Chhattisgarh, with a
good strategy in place his party could get more than 22 seats in UP. These
leaders believe that Congress should not have joined hands with Akhilesh Yadav
in the 2017 assembly polls when the party got only six seats with just six
percent vote share. They feel that party would have done much better if there
was no alliance with Akhilesh Yadav.
The Congress party paid a heavy
price due to anti-incumbency of Samajwadi Party in the elections. The Samajwadi
Party itself could not do much and got less than 50 seats in UP despite the
joint campaign by Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav.
Senior Congress leaders feel that
the Congress party started losing ground since 1996 when it entered into an
alliance with BSP. The party had entered the alliance when Narasimha Rao was
PM. As per the seat sharing arrangement, the BSP contested 300 seats while 125
were left for Congress. But the alliance flopped miserably and Mayawati blamed
that the Congress voters did not vote for BSP candidates. Whether it was 1996
or 2017, the Congress voters opted for BJP than supporting SP or BSP.
Now in order to retain support in
all the 80 Lok Sabha seats and keep the party workers engaged the leaders want
Congress to keep away from any alliance so that they could do well in the 2022
assembly polls.
There is no doubt that the general
sentiment in the party is against joining the alliance with SP and BSP, but the
final decision has to be taken by party president Rahul Gandhi. (IPA Service)
The post UP Congress Leaders Opposed To Joining SP-BSP Alliance appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
