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Uttar Pradesh : Congress manoeuvres |
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There is a logic to the recent Congress attacks on the Mulayam Singh Government, even though it supports the UPA at the Centre.
The Samajwadi Party won the recent round of Lok Sabha elections, picking up 36 out of the State’s 80 Lok Sabha seats against the Congress’ nine. But following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s debacle in the State and the not unrelated arrival of a new dispensation at the Centre, the Congress sees a new opportunity to capture ground from the Samajwadi Party and, with some luck, to marginalise it.
The Congress leadership is trying to persuade or pressure the Rashtriya Lok Dal to defect from Chief Minister Mulayam’s camp. There are also indications of a growing closeness, or tactical convergence of interests, between the Congress and Mayawati’s pro-Dalit (low caste) Bahujan Samaj Party. The calculation is that an alliance with the BSP will help the Congress not only in Uttar Pradesh but also in Maharashtra, where Legislative Assembly elections are due by the end of the year. Although the BSP did not win any seat from Maharashtra in the 14th general election, its spirited performance, especially in Vidharbha, brought about the defeat of Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance candidates in about a dozen Lok Sabha seats.
The logical conclusion of these moves could be the ouster of the Mulayam Singh Government and mid-term polls for the U.P. Assembly.
An analysis of the data on how the various parties fared in U.P. in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election reveals that the BSP led in 100 Assembly segments, the Congress in 47, and the RLD in 22. Significantly, the Congress came second in more than 50 segments. The calculation is that if it can make common cause with the BSP and the RLD, the new combine can win 42 per cent of the State’s 403 Assembly seats. But the Congress also looks forward to a substantial shift of the mass Muslim vote from the Samajwadi Party to the new formation.
The game plan seems to dictate that if all this is to happen, the first step is to get rid of the Mulayam Singh Government. The arithmetic in the current Assembly is such that the Government is likely to survive even if the Congress and the RLD formally oppose it. It is in this context that the statements about rising crime and the “deteriorating law and order situation” in Uttar Pradesh acquire an ominous meaning.
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