The demotivation has started from western UP where Congress is going to contest around half a dozen seats.
The Congress may have got 17 seats to contest from among Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, in the seat-sharing arrangement with the Samajwadi Party, but sources claim that the grand old party’s cadre is not able to function because of “low motivation”.
Senior leaders suggest that the demotivation has started from western UP where Congress is going to contest around half a dozen seats. But with the change of equation in the region (like the switch of Rashtriya Lok Dal to the NDA), Congress leaders are convinced that the battle to win the elections is going not only to be challenging but difficult. A senior leader said, “First with RLD, there may have been some clarity on certain seats, but now many in the Congress have started to believe that they may not be able to make a substantial electoral mark in the state. Therefore they are not enthusiastic.”
However, the leadership claims the work has started on the seats that the Congress has got. Avinash Pandey, AICC general secretary and in-charge Uttar Pradesh said, “I am finding a lot of enthusiasm in the Congress cadre, they are all participating and coming up with ideas and programs, units are being formed. All over the place a pretty good number of programs are taking place. Recently in Bharat Jodho Nyay Yatra, everybody participated in it. In UP Yatra as well, everyone participated in it.”
Pandey further added, “I have moved around in all the divisions in the state and all the rank and file attended my meetings. Work distribution has been done. So overall the party cadre irrespective of all the units of the Congress, including all frontal organizations—everyone is enthusiastic and they are all prepared to take the challenge and win the electoral battle.”
The Congress party has, a political analyst said, failed to cope with the changing identity politics of Uttar Pradesh. They had Muslims as their traditional voters, who later shifted to SP. They had Dalits voting for them, but those voters too shifted to Mayawati over time. Then there were Brahmins who saw nothing happening with Congress and shifted to the BJP.
The analyst added, “Now not having identified its vote bank, the party is naturally not going to perform well because its cadre, which has very little existence, does not know who to target and what to talk about while looking for votes. And above all, there is no proper leadership who can go out of the way to establish a momentum for the party or build a cadre in the state. Without both, candidates know there is not much they can gain.”