Everyone in the Congress party is worried that Gandhi has staked his political future in Uttar Pradesh even as he confidently steers the Congress away from its past.
Everyone in the Congress party is worried that Rahul Gandhi has staked his political future in Uttar Pradesh even as he confidently steers the Congress away from its past, banking entirely on general secretary Digvijay Singh to work out caste and religion equations for the coming elections.
At a recent stocktaking meeting with his core group, Rahul was reportedly upset by the Congress party being projected as Samajwadi Party’s B-team. Party leaders have vowed to rethink their strategy and directed campaigners to attack SP and BSP equally in public meetings. Party insiders say that Rahul’s concern was that people may prefer to vote for the SP if they perceive that the Congress will ally with it after elections.
Rahul has set a target of getting 30% of the votes, as opposed to the 8% that the party has been getting in the past decade. It is no small task for Rahul and Digvijay Singh to double the Congress’ base, and catch up with the two regional parties. The BSP polled 23.06% vote in 2002 and 30.43% in 2007. The Samajwadi Party polled 25.37% in 2002 and 25.43% in 2007. Even the Bhartiya Janata Party fared better than the Congress, polling 20.08% votes in 2002 and 16.97% in 2007.
Another difficulty for Rahul is that the Congress does not have any fixed voter base unlike earlier when it had the support of the Dalits and the Muslims.
Congress leaders in Delhi are skeptical about Digvijay Singh’s contention that bulk of the Muslims who have been pocketed by the SP and the BSP can be won over. Digvijay’s calculation is that if a sizable section of Muslims shift to the Congress, it will pay dividends in at least 120 of the 403 constituencies where they constitute almost one-fourth of the population.
Rahul’s own estimation is that the Congress will be on the top and then rope in the SP to cover up the deficit needed to form a Congress-led coalition government. In any case he does not want the SP to emerge as the front-runner. He believes that SP will not be able to attract the upper caste, particularly the urban voters.
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