Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with Uttar Pradesh party president Brijlal Khabri during the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra at Aylam village in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district. Photo: Twitter/@INCIndia Via ANI
aafter declining an invitation to Congress to attend India Jodo YatraSamajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav participated in Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s show of strength in Telangana recently This shows that his party is keen on an opposition front without the Congress.
Mr. Yadav’s presence in Telangana’s Khammam district Responding to a question on his participation in the Uttar Pradesh yatra, he said the BJP and the Congress are the same, while the SP’s ideology is different. Many felt it was the immaturity of Mr Yadav to close the door on a visit Its purpose was to unite people and parties against the BJP. His next letter to Congress leader Rahul GandhiIn which Mr Yadav wrote that he hoped the yatra would achieve its goal, it seemed like an afterthought and only created ambiguity about the party’s next course of action.
During his recent visit to Uttarakhand, the SP President laid down the terms of the alliance. If anyone asks him for a seat in Uttar Pradesh, he said, he will ask for constituencies in Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. This ‘someone’ can only be Congress.
More than ideology, what is running through Mr. Yadav’s mind is the past. he hasn’t forgotten 2017 Assembly Elections when he shook hands with Mr. Gandhi; The result was disastrous. Moreover, regional parties that emerged from Mandal politics in Gau Patti continue to have anti-Congress sentiment and believe that the Grand Old Party will self-resurrect at their cost.
However, the change in stand could create further cracks in the SP’s alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in the state. Later The alliance lost Om Prakash Rajbhar It appears to the BJP that the RLD, which is in alliance with the Congress in Rajasthan, is in talks with the national party in UP and Haryana as well. During the UP leg of the yatra, RLD president Chaudhary Jayant Singh chose to stay on leave, but his presence could be felt in the massive show of support by the RLD cadre for Mr Gandhi. Keeping his options open, Mr. Singh wants to bargain hard for seats with the SP, which he could not do in the assembly elections.
With the Congress, the RLD may revive its old demand for reservation for Jats in central government jobs in UP, using it as an antidote to the BJP’s communal card in the sugarcane belt. A Jat-Muslim-Gurjar combination could then be a deciding factor during the elections. It was during the last phase of the Manmohan Singh government that reservation was given to the Jats of UP, but it was put on hold by the Supreme Court after the BJP emerged victorious in 2014.
After the UP assembly elections last year, a section of Muslims felt that they had supported the SP, which cleverly remained silent on community issues, and would now like to vote for the Congress during the Lok Sabha polls, provided it puts up some fight Show emotion. At that time Mr. Gandhi was taking aim at the Modi government online. Now he is talking about getting down on the ground and opening a shop of love and peace in the market of hatred. If Muslim votes go towards Congress then it can become a headache for SP.
The Congress kept reminding reporters during the visit that it was not in UP to undercut its ideological allies, but only to focus on pan-India issues such as communal strife, unemployment and price rise. So far, Mr. Gandhi decided to hold a big rally in Panipat, Haryana, which shares its borders and demographic profile with West UP, and discussed reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), which his father did not support in Parliament. He talked about the effect of Minimum Support Price and Agniveer Yojana with select groups. It was not only the larger-than-life cut-out of Mr. Gandhi chewing sugarcane that attracted attention, but also the banners advertising the party’s OBC Morcha.
With Yogendra Yadav and Rakesh Tikait joining the yatra in Haryana, the event looked like a mobile version of the 2020-21 farmers’ protest at the Delhi border against the farm laws. And when former state Congress president and grassroots leader Ajay Kumar Lallu said that the yatra’s ripples would be felt in eastern UP as well, the political ambition of the yatra cannot be denied.
However, for now, the yatra can be treated as just a political move in the state which has the highest number of Lok Sabha seats.