It was the winter of 2017 and Netaji, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, advised his son and chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to not commit the cardinal mistake of tying up with the Congress in the Uttar Pradesh elections. ‘This won’t help us’, he had told his son.
Akhilesh went ahead with the tie-up and surprisingly, also gave over 100 seats out of the 400-odd in the state to the Congress. The result was a disaster as his father had feared — Congress won just seven seats and Samajwadi Party (SP) also collapsed, leading to a historic win for the BJP riding on the Narendra Modi wave. “Akhilesh then learnt his lesson that Congress pulls down the SP in Uttar Pradesh and he steered clear of them in 2022, doing much better than 2017,” a top SP leader told News18.
Behind Akhilesh’s present irritation with the Congress is this 2017 lesson where the SP leader has developed little tolerance for the ‘big brother’ attitude of the Congress. Things have come to such a pass that some in the SP are not even ruling out the chance of Akhilesh Yadav choosing to put up candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli in 2024 if Congress does not make up with him.
SP spokesperson IP Singh’s post on social networking site X added fuel to fire. “SP will field its candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli. Congress must contest elections in Kanauj and Azamgarh. Most Welcome. Despite the slogan “I am a daughter, I can fight”, Congress remained ineffective.”
The SP has traditionally not put up candidates in these bastions of the Congress, helping it win the seats.
But, in 2019, Rahul Gandhi still lost from Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani. Making matters worse for the Congress presently in UP is its state president Ajay Rai who has adopted an aggressive line against the SP, including questioning how SP lost the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll last year if it was so strong in UP. Akhilesh retorted that he had an emotional connection with Azamgarh like the Congress has with Amethi and Rae Bareilly, and they should be mindful of the same.
The Congress, however, has been less than charitable to the SP in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh elections, sparing not even a single seat for SP and reinforcing that the alliance is only for the Lok Sabha elections and not the state elections. Akhilesh Yadav has said that Congress should have clarified this right at the onset of the formation of INDIA. An angry Akhilesh is promising to pay the Congress back in the same coin in 2024 and this is bad news for INDIA.
A BJP sweep in Uttar Pradesh for the third time in 2024 could pave the way for the return of Narendra Modi as the prime minister again and the state with 80 Lok Sabha seats is hence the key for INDIA. But with the BSP already out of the alliance and now SP-Congress relations becoming frosty, it is the BJP which is laughing its way to the bank in UP. BJP-led alliance won 73 seats out of 80 in UP in 2014 and it is aiming at breaking that record in 2024 now.
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