The Congress is confronted with these question after results of byelections to two assembly seats was declared on Tuesday.
Is the Rahul Gandhi effect already on the wane in Uttar Pradesh? Will the Congress be able to repeat its performance of Lok Sabha-2009 in the 2012 UP assembly polls? Or will it remain at the same place it was in the 2007 assembly election?
The Congress is confronted with these questions after results of byelections to two assembly seats was declared on Tuesday. The Samajwadi Party (SP) comfortably managed to retain both seats. The Congress, which boasts of coming to power in the state in
2012, finished fourth in one place and third in the other.
Interestingly, the BSP had not contested both the seats. BSP chief and UP chief minister Mayawati had declared beforehand that she would stay away from the bypolls till the next assembly election to ward off criticisms of misuse of official machinery in favour of the ruling party.
Samajwadi Party candidate Utkarsh Verma, son of late SP MLA Dr Kaushal Kishore, bagged the Lakhimpur assembly seat with a margin of over 23,000 votes. Congress came fourth here.
Significantly, the fledgling Peace Party was the runner-up here.
What added the proverbial insult to injury was the fact that Congress nominee Saif Ali Naqvi is the son of Lakhimpur Kheri MP and Congress veteran Zafar Ali Naqvi. BJP ranked third here.
In Nidhauli Kalan (Etah district), the late SP legislator’s son Amit Gaurav Yadav won by over 24,000 votes. Here, the Congress nominee came third, polling about the same 16,000-odd votes the party had in 2007. The BJP came fourth while the candidate from BJP rebel Kalyan Singh’s new outfit, the Jan Kranti Party, was the runner-up.
SP is understandably in high spirits. “This is just the trailer… just wait, we will emerge victorious in 2012 [assembly election], too,” exulted state SP president Akhilesh Yadav. “We have retained both seats despite the BSP’s machinations against us,” he added.
The Congress is in denial mode. “Results of two byelections should not be seen as a definitive trend,” said state Congress spokesman Dwijendra Tripathi.
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