With the BSP denting its electoral fortunes in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the party high command has decided to cut short its honeymoon with the Dalit party.
NEW DELHI: The Congress has started feeling the Mayawati pinch. With the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) denting its electoral fortunes in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the party high command has decided to cut short its honeymoon with the Dalit party and launch a frontal attack on it.
Reacting to Tuesday’s fidayeen attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, a Congress spokesperson sharply rebuked the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, asking her to concentrate on governance instead of running around the country holding rallies to expand her political base.
“Mayawati appears to be preoccupied with travelling around the country in order to build up her party. In the process, she should not lose focus on the governance of a large and sensitive state like Uttar Pradesh,” said Jayanti Natarajan.
She also lambasted Mayawati for trying to shift the blame on to the Centre for the terror attack. It was the duty of the state to act upon the intelligence inputs provided by the Centre. “It is better that the blame game being indulged in is stopped and the authorities concerned take security measures seriously,” the Congress leader said.
This is the first time since Mayawati swept to power in Uttar Pradesh last May that the Congress has lambasted her for poor governance. The harsh criticism appears to have been prompted by the BSP’s role as a spoiler for the Congress in the recent Gujarat and Himachal polls and her plans to dent the Congress in several other poll-bound states.
In the last few days, the BSP chief addressed rallies in Bangalore, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram. On January 6, she is slated to address a meeting in Hyderabad.
Though the BSP fielded as many as 162 candidates in Gujarat, it did not win a single seat. Its candidates cut into Congress votes and spoiled the latter’s chances in over a dozen constituencies. It lost four seats by 300-1,000 votes. In some constituencies, the BSP secured between 4,000-5,000 votes.
In Himachal Pradesh, the BSP contested 68 seats and won just one seat, but it ended up damaging the Congress in as many as eight seats by weaning Dalit and Brahmin voters away. While doing this, it increased its vote share from a paltry 0.7% in the last elections to 7.3% this time.
Mayawati is also eyeing Maharashtra, where the BSP had polled 4% of the vote in 2004 and finished third in 82 seats, behind the Congress-NCP and Shiv Sena-BJP.
The BSP’s forays into Karnataka are also being viewed with trepidation in the Congress camp. Mayawati could emerge a potential spoiler in Delhi, too, where elections are due later this year. In the municipal elections last year, the BSP won 17 seats, much to the surprise of the Congress and the BJP.
The Congress is thus reluctantly realising that it will no longer pay to stay friends with Mayawati.
Referring to Tuesday’s terror attack in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress spokesperson said while the Union government had a duty to provide necessary intelligence inputs and also logistical and paramilitary support, “unless the state government tightens and firms up measures for security, the situation cannot be brought under control. Basic intelligence information will have to be collected and acted upon by the state government.”
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