With the Congress trying to make the best out of the Rita Bahuguna Joshi-Mayawati spat, the stage is set for a no-holds barred battle between the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress, which is fast emerging as the main challenger to the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, of course, expressed deep anguish and regret at Joshi’s remarks of a personal nature against Mayawati. But just a couple of days later, her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi carried the fight to the BSP camp, saying that though the words used by Rita Bahuguna Joshi were “unfortunate”, he could understand her sentiment and anger against the Mayawati government. Cleverly shifting the focus away from the Pradesh Congress president’s utterances to statues erected by the Mayawati government, he said that the Chief Minister spent people’s money on her statues instead of producing more electricity for the power starved people of the state. Targeting Mayawati’s statue building spree across the state, Rahul Gandhi said, every political leader has his or her priority. In a telling comment, he said the UP Chief Minister’s priority appears to be what she is doing and not the development of the state or removal of poverty.
The significance of the turf battle which is getting intensified between the Congress and Mayawati’s BSP becomes clear from the Samajwadi Party’s fear of being left out of the sweep-stakes.
Samajwadi Party’s state president Akhilesh Singh wanted to know from the Congress whether it was with the BSP or his party. The party’s fear that it may be forced to cede the main opposition space in the state to the Congress is clear from his comment that the Congress and the BSP were engaged in shadow-boxing over Joshi’s remarks. The Samajwadi Party knows that it will have to pull out all stops to maintain its position as the main challenger to Mayawati’s BSP in the state. The Congress put up an extraordinarily tough fight in the Lok Sabha elections, coming in second place and just behind the Samajwadi Party in terms of number of seats won. The BSP was relegated to the third spot.
While disowning Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s remark and reaffirming the party’s commitment to the cause of Dalits and women, the Congress has used the attack on her residence to mobilize its workers across the state. The party hopes that if it is successful in focusing the public spotlight on what it considers the Mayawati government’s poor track record of governance, it would pay rich dividends in the Assembly elections to be held in three years’ time. This would be in line with the party’s plan to rebuild itself in states in the Hindi heartland where it had become a marginal player over the years.
While Rahul Gandhi’s game plan has succeeded to an extent in Uttar Pradesh, going by the cutting to size of both Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, the Congress will face a much tougher challenge in Bihar, another state where it has been pushed to the margins. The Janata Dal United led in the state by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has successfully sidelined both opponents like Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Ramvilas Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party and the main supporting party, the BJP. The Congress will have a tough fight on its hands if it decides to take on Nitish Kumar and his party. The task of the Congress is equally un-envious in neighbouring Jharkhand where the BJP dealt out a sound thrashing to the Congress-Jharkhand Mukti Morcha combine in the Lok Sabha elections. The state is likely to have Assembly elections just after the monsoon ends, perhaps in September or October.
The latest development in Uttar Pradesh has to be seen in the context of the bigger Congress game plan to rebuild the party in the Hindi heartland states. There may be more fireworks in the offing. One can only hope that in the heat of the battle, the norms of social and political life are not given a go by.
