UPA disintegrates : Congress to go it alone in UP, Bihar,Indian Politics, News Analysis, India News Online

Snubbed by its allies in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in the seat sharing for the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress, which is heading the present coalition arrangement at the Centre, has decided to go it alone in the two states which account for 120 of the total 543 Lok Sabha elective seats. The UPA has virtually disappeared in the two states as its constituents are fighting the elections against each other, not only against the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and member parties of the emerging third front.

The Congress decision to go it alone came after Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) unilaterally worked out a seat sharing agreement for 37 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats from Bihar, leaving only three seats for the Congress. Under the agreement the RJD is to contest 25 seats and the LJP 12. The Congress was fuming when the announcement came and the party’s in charge of Bihar Sushil Kumar Shinde said that the RJD-LJP decision is humiliating for his party and it will contest as many seats as possible.

To pay the RJD and the LJP back in their own coin, the Congress announced the next day that it had entered into a seat sharing agreement with Shibu Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand. Under the arrangement the Congress is to contest seven Lok Sabha Seats, and the JMM five out of the total 14 seats from the state, leaving only two for the RJD and none for the LJP.

The scenario is no better in Uttar Pradesh, with the Samajwadi Party coming out with the names of its candidates for 75 of the total 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The Congress hit back by saying that it will contest over 60 seats in the state.

Observers say that the stage is now set for multi-cornered contests in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The advantage in such a situation may lie with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Janata Dal United-BJP NDA combine in Bihar.

Congress to contest 37 seats in Bihar

The gloves were off on Saturday, March 21, as the Congress announced its decision to contest 37 seats in Bihar, leaving two constituencies from where RJD president Lalu Prasad will contest and one for Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan.

The announcement drew a quick response from the RJD leader. “Congress president Sonia Gandhi will realise her mistake after the polls. She will then understand the RJD’s importance.”

He made it clear that there would be no rethink on the seat-sharing arrangement announced by him along with Paswan on Tuesday, March 17, as per which the RJD would contest 25 seats, the LJP 12 and the Congress three.

Even as the Congress and the RJD stepped up their verbal duel of the past four days, blaming each other for the ties reaching a breakpoint, both maintained that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was intact. But clearly the dominant mood within the two camps was against attempting a salvage operation, though Lalu Yadav said his party would not attack the Congress during the campaign in Bihar.

Lalu blows hot and cold : To put up candidates against Cong in Bihar

In a new turn in their tussle, RJD chief Lalu Prasad declared on Sunday, March 22, his party’s intention to field its candidates against the Congress in three seats held by it in Bihar and accused it of trying to ‘finish’ regional parties.

Arguing that Congress alone is not UPA, he told reporters “if the name UPA remains it is good, otherwise some other name can be adopted and some other front will be formed.”

In reply to questions, he said there is no plan to ally with the third front. “We are part and parcel of UPA...its my responsibility to keep the UPA intact and I am ready to make any sacrifice for it.”

Lalu also said the UPA will come back to power and that Manmohan is ‘suitable’ for being the Prime Minister again.

Notwithstanding the battle with Congress in Bihar, Lalu said he has ‘high respect’ for Congress President Sonia Gandhi and did not want to involve her in any controversy.

Sonia, Rahul for taking the battle to the allies camp

Fuming at the ‘betrayal’ by the RJD and the LJP, the Congress admitted that the UPA has virtually disintegrated in Bihar and said that it would be difficult to do business with the RJD. The same is the case with Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.

Faced with the challenge from the regional outfits, the Congress has decided to deal with the situation by fielding as many candidates as possible in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Observers say that the idea is to turn the crisis into an opportunity for the party to rebuild itself. Reports say that party president Sonia Gandhi and her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi have devised the strategy aimed at stepping out of the shadow of regional allies and bringing the party back in reckoning.

Reports say that the Congress has rejected overtures by Lalu Prasad Yadav after announcement of his seat sharing deal with Ram Vilas Paswan. The party has also spurned the offer of the Samajwadi Party to reopen talks on seat sharing in Uttar Pradesh.

Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, reports say, see an opportunity in the crisis. A party functionary said: “It is a blessing in disguise”. The party recognizes that the fruits of the new strategy will take some time to emerge. But a start has at least been made. “Now our party symbol and flag will be visible in most, if not all places, in these states. It will give us a chance to try and rebuild our organization there,” an official said.

He added, “We only wish that the seat-sharing talks had collapsed about two months back so that we had got a chance to build an atmosphere.”

The party, however, knows exactly how well it can do. Ideally, it should have gone for all the 120 seats, but it plans to field candidates in around 26 seats in Bihar and 60-odd of 80 in UP.

It will be up against its former allies in some of these constituencies.

The party is also planning to poach candidates with good prospects from both the RJD-LJP combine and SP - such as Sadhu Yadav and Salim Sherwani, and former BJP members like Ramesh Tomar from UP.

Going it alone and political wilderness

While senior party leaders as well as state level leaders are of the view that the Congress should have taken the decision to go it alone at least two months back to facilitate selection of prospective candidates, a fear is also lurking that a period of isolation and political wilderness may lie ahead. Senior party leaders argue that an early start would have ensured that the best possible candidates received the party ticket.

At the Congress Working Committee meeting in January, many senior leaders, including Digvijay Singh and Mohsina Kidwai, had argued that the party should go it alone in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Along with several other leaders, they had argued that the party’s situation had improved since the 2004 elections.

Given the changed ground situation, they had advocated a solo fight. Shades of this argument were also backed by Rahul Gandhi, who had suggested fielding young candidates from seats where the party had a poor showing. The Congress general secretary had argued that while such an effort would not guarantee victory it would help rebuild the party organisation on the ground.

However, at that time the “going solo” line was put aside, as it was felt that the Congress, which had ruled as the leader of a coalition, could not be seen as discarding allies at its whim and fancy. In keeping with the “coalition dharma”, the party eschewed the advice of many of its senior members.

With the Samajwadi Party virtually dictating terms in Uttar Pradesh, making an understanding an impossibility and Lalu Prasad’s humiliating offer to the Congress in Bihar, the going solo proponents have had the last laugh. “Congress has proved that it can run a coalition, we have done so for the last five years. Now the party is fighting for full majority,” a senior leader said.

The development comes at a time when signals are emerging that sooner or later, there will be a re-alignment of political forces. The third front launched last week may not itself win power at the Centre but some of its constituents may be a part of the next ruling coalition. NCP chief Sharad Pawar has said on more than one occasion in the recent past that existing political bonding could alter in the event of the two major parties failing to cross the threshold required for winning over allies. With the UPA virtually disintegrating in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, parties, both within and outside the UPA, may come together after the Lok Sabha elections to provide the next government at the Centre. It may or may not include the Congress.

Lalu, Paswan in touch with Mulayam

Faced with the Congress decision to contest 37 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, which would split the UPA vote, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan met in New Delhi on March 19 to discuss the situation. Paswan later said that he is confident that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi would not do anything to weaken their alliance and strengthen the BJP-led NDA. RJD sources claimed that a “compromise” might be worked out between the RJD and the Congress at what they called the highest level.

There are also reports that Lalu Prasad Yadav and Paswan are in touch with Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav, who will be a key player in the post-poll power puzzle, and who has barely been able to mask his bitterness with the Congress. Sources said that the two Yadav satraps have drawn up plans to campaign for each other.

And, the squabbles within the UPA are music for NCP boss Sharad Pawar, who has made no secret of his prime ministerial aspirations, as well as the Left which is determined to thwart the Congresss claim to be the lead player of the next “secular” coalition as well.

The gathering war clouds on the Bihar front coincided with indications that the Congress has not been able to get its southern allies DMK and PMK thrash out their differences, with the latter reopening lines of communication with the rival suitor, Jayalalitha-led AIADMK.

The decision on the induction of RJD renegede Sadhu Yadav was taken despite clear hints from Lalu Yadav that this was not going to be seen as a friendly act, and after the Congress leadership, party sources said, turned down Lalu’s offer of three more seats - two from his kitty and one from Paswan’s - as unsatisfactory. A Congress ticket for the brother-in-law is, going by the clan code, a red rag.

Paswan’s strategic position that “this is between Congress and RJD” has not buffered him against Congress ire. The talks with Pappu Yadav, convicted for the murder of former CPIM MP Ajit Sarkar, only reflect Congress’s bellicose plans. Pappu, whose wife won the last election on the LJP ticket, has enough clout in the Kosi region to cause anxiety to Paswan’s candidates - there are four of them.

Congress’ vastly diminished vote bank is, broadly speaking, confined to upper castes. If the party selects its ticket from among its traditional constituents, it can split the upper caste votes of Nitish Kumar-led NDA. But a deliberate decision to nominate Yadav and Muslim candidates would be seen as aimed against the RJD.

Congress shaken by Lalu-Paswan coup

When RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan announced their seat-sharing pact in Bihar in New Delhi on Tuesday, March 17, it came as a big shock to the Congress. The pact relegated the grand old national party to the position of a fringe player in Bihar by giving it just three of the 40 Lok Sabha seats. Lalu Yadav rubbed it in by saying that the number of seats allotted to the Congress was based on what he called the ground realities.

In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had also cited what he called ground reality to leave out just five of the 80 Lok Sabha seats from the state for the Congress.

The RJD-LJP agreement was especially galling for the Congress as Lalu Yadav and Paswan were in the list of loyal allies of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

No sooner was the deal formally announced, the Congress, seething with anger over what it felt was a “betrayal”, declared that it’ll field its candidates in as many as 20 seats in Bihar, which accounts for 40 seats in the Lok Sabha.

To complicate matters for RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s attempts to hold on to the state, his brother-in-law Annirudh Prasad, aka Sadhu Yadav, ganged up with former Union Minister Jai Narayan Prasad Nishad and party MLA and former state RJD chief, Ramai Ram, to raise a banner of revolt against their party.

Sadhu Yadav, who is irked with Lalu Yadav for conceding the Bettiah seat to the LJP, virtually shutting out the possibility of his re-nomination, said that he’d enter the fray as an independent from the constituency that he had been eyeing, and adjoining Motihari, which had sent Union Minister Akhilesh Prasad Singh to the Lok Sabha in the previous election. The LJP has decided to nominate famous Hindi film director Prakash Jha from the Bettiah constituency.

As per the agreement worked out between the two UPA partners in Bihar, the RJD will be fielding its candidates from 25 constituencies, while Paswan’s outfit has seen its share swell from 8 to 12. The Congress, which had been allotted four seats in the general elections held five years ago, was left with just three seats - Madhubani, Sasaram (SC) and Aurangabad. The three seats had been bagged by the party in 2004.

Congress hits back in Jharkhand

A day after the announcement of the RJD-LJP agreement in Bihar, the Congress hit back in neighboring Jharkhand where in a seat-sharing arrangement with the two UPA allies on March 18, it left only two seats for Lalu Prasad’s RJD and nothing for Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP.

The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) was an unwitting beneficiary of the spat, getting five seats, one more than what had been earmarked for it earlier.

The Congress has kept seven. It has thus pocketed an extra seat from the two given to the CPI in 2004 when the Left had an arrangement with the Congress and the RJD. Lalu was initially given to believe he would get three seats and the JMM four. The state has 14 Lok Sabha seats.

K. Keshava Rao, the Congress leader in charge of Jharkhand who announced the seats at a news conference, didn’t say if the deal was meant to spite Lalu Prasad but left little doubt the RJD chief hadn’t been fair.

Rao said: “It is a principled arrangement. We have given the sitting MPs their seats. We haven’t reacted to what happened in Bihar but they (the RJD) must learn to reciprocate. An alliance isn’t a political business, it’s a meeting of minds and a true friendship to give a fight to forces inimical to our ideology.”

Rao justified giving the LJP nothing, saying Paswan had “no votes” in the state as the Dalits had mostly backed Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Party in 2004.

No more seat-sharing talks with SP

The Congress has ruled out a seat-sharing arrangement with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh saying that there is no time for negotiations now. Pradesh Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi said in New Delhi on Wednesday, March 18, that there is no time for negotiations now. But she clarified that the Congress would field candidates only in constituencies where it is certain of coming at least third. The party has so far announced candidates for 24 constituencies in the state. Reports say that the Congress may put up more than 60 candidates in Uttar Pradesh.

Joshi said: “Congress president Sonia Gandhi has asked to pick candidates carefully so that there is no division of the secular vote in the state.”

A day earlier on March 17, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav had said in Lucknow that he was ready for seat sharing talks if the Congress leadership was willing for a dialogue on the issue.

Congress, NCP close to agreement in Maharashtra

Reports say that the Congress and the NCP are close to finalizing a seat-sharing pact in Maharashtra for the Lok Sabha elections. The agreement is likely to be announced in a day or two. The Maharashtra breakthrough would come after weeks of tough negotiations and intense bargaining between the Congress and NCP, whose relations, despite being part of the ruling alliance in the state as well as at the Centre, were said to have “strained” following reports of NCP chief, Sharad Pawar’s prime ministerial aspirations and his alleged gravitation towards Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray.

NCP leader Tariq Anwar indicated that the Congress-NCP seat-sharing talks had entered the final stages and would be clinched under an agreement allotting 26 seats for the Congress and 22 seats for the NCP. In the 48-seat Maharashtra, the two parties had divided the seats in the 2004 polls in 27:21 ratio.

Tamil Nadu set for political realignment

Reports say that important players in Tamil Nadu may change their allies in the coming days leading to the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress wants to continue its alliance with the Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA) headed by DMK president and Chief Minister Karunanidhi with a larger allocation of seats. But the DPA prospects in the elections may be hit if the PMK, a vocal critic of the DMK, switches its sides and goes over to the rival allies headed by Jayalalithaa of the All India Anna DMK. Reports say that the PMK has almost finalised negotiations with Jayalalithaa. Contours of the new alliance, sources said, are being worked out by AIADMK. “The seat sharing talks are at a critical stage. The AIADMK has offered seven seats to PMK, two seats each to the CPIM and the CPI and four seats to the MDMK,” sources said. PMK has in the past shown immense flexibility when it comes to striking alliances. It was part of NDA on and off between 1999 and the 2004 elections. In the last general elections, the party played a major role in forging an anti-NDA alliance in Tamil Nadu. This time, it may be part of an anti-BJP, anti-Congress group. PMK founder S Ramadoss’ son Anbumani Ramadoss is still Union Minister for Health. According to sources, the senior Ramadoss is keen on parting ways with the Congress and has told his son that he should quit the DMK-led alliance for his political survival.

The Congress has begun efforts to neutralize the loss that PMK’s exit could have on its prospects. Sources said two emissaries of Tamil superstar and DMDK leader Vijayakanth had on Thursday night talks with Congress leader Ahmed Patel in the capital. Apparently, DMDK is demanding five seats.

The PMK, which has a hold over backward Vanniyars in northern Tamil Nadu, is worried about two of its pockets - Kancheepuram and Tindivanam - made reserved seats following the delimitation exercise. But it still commands enough clout among members of the community to influence the electoral verdict in at least a dozen Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and adjoining Puducherry.

PM confident of UPA’s victory

In his first interaction with the media after his heart bypass surgery in January, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in New Delhi on March 19, that he was confident that the people of India will vote UPA back to power on its performance. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the defence investiture ceremony at Rashtriyapati Bhavan, the Prime Minister said he is ready to campaign for the Congress-led UPA in the elections.

On the third front, the Prime Minister said: “The third front is our rival, it should not be under-estimated.” Asked whom he considered the biggest rival in the coming elections, Dr. Manmohan Singh said: “Rivals are rivals, we should not under-estimate anyone.”

On BJP candidate Varun Gandhi’s alleged “hate-speech” in Pilibhit, the Prime Minister said: “He has said that he did not make those comments. But if it is correct, it is unfortunate.” He said communalism and casteism were enemies of the nation and have to be fought collectively.

UPA may not get majority: Survey

A pre-poll survey conducted by a multi-national agency for the Congress shows that the party would this time cross the threshold of 150 seats, something it had failed to do in the last four general elections. At the same time the constituency wise survey based on a sample size of around 30,000 indicated that the UPA would need outside support to cross the half-way mark of 272 to retain power. A similar survey done by the same agency during the last round of Assembly polls proved largely accurate, claimed a source.

The findings of the Congress-commissioned survey, were submitted to the high command a couple of days back to help it assess the emerging mood on the ground just when the campaign for the April 16 first phase of the Lok Sabha polls is picking up.

The Congress leadership has set an ambitious target of winning over 170 seats on the assumption that the perceived electoral downturn of the BJP will help it in most states where the two principal rivals are engaged in a straight fight.

The survey says that the Congress could gain significantly in the Left-ruled states of West Bengal and Kerala, at a time when the CPI(M) is trying to re-launch the third front. Other states that could help the party improve its tally are Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, NDA governed Punjab and Orissa.

Though the Congress was defeated by the BJP in Madhya Pradesh in the November assembly polls, the survey indicates the party could improve its Lok Sabha tally, even though the saffron party would win a majority of seats in MP. But in Rajasthan, Punjab and Orissa, the Congress is shown to be taking a clear upper hand this time.

The Congress is seen to maintain its overall supremacy against the BJP in Delhi and, with partner National Conference, in J&K.

While the Congress is shown as losing seats in Gujarat, the party may not improve in Maharashtra, either.

The Congress-led UDF, which won just one of the 20 Lok Sabha seats from Kerala in 2004, would improve its tally mainly due to the internecine battle within the state CPIM and cracks within LDF. In West Bengal, where the Congress won just six out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2004, this poll could work wonders after the tie-up with the Trinamool Congress.

The Congress leadership’s assessment is that the party has to emerge as the largest party with at least 150 seats in the 15th Lok Sabha to be effective in dealing with the bargaining of potential post-poll allies.

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